Bangladesh's campaign nearing end

Bangladesh archers wrapped up their Asian Games campaign yesterday with a couple of good results and a couple more near-misses at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium archery ground.

The campaign ended with defeats in the compound event's pre-quarterfinals; with the men losing narrowly against Indonesia and women being outclassed by the host country as well.

The men's team, featuring Ashim Kumar Das, Jabed Alam and Abul Kashem Mamun, lost by 230-228 points while the women's team, comprised of Roksana Akter, Bonna Akter and Suma Biswas, lost by 222-208 points.

Although the compound event was not the discipline which Bangladesh had pinned most of their hopes on, the men's performance was praised by the coach.

“It was a bit of bad luck as we played against the hosts who are very good,” coach Martin Frederick said. “We could have been in the quarterfinals had luck favoured us. Another team in the pre-quarterfinals scored 227 points, one less than us and still went through.”

The German coach also found positives from the campaign, with one of his team's reaching the quarterfinals while most of the others were eliminated from the pre-quarterfinals or the earlier stage.

“Things could have been better but we had a few good outings, including Ruman Sana's effort, the recurve mixed team reaching the quarterfinals and compound men's team's performance. We have some international competitions coming up, and through this they will improve further,” said Frederick.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh's men's golf team finished 16th out of 20 teams with Shahab Uddin finishing 55th and Shomrat Sikder, Mohammad Farhad and Shafique Bakha finishing in 61st position among 86 golfers. The women's team finished 13th among 15 teams, with Sonya Akter sealing 33rd position and Liza Akter grabbing the following position out of 42 golfers.

Away in Palembang, skeet shooter Sabbir Hasan finished 28th among 30 participants to bring Bangladesh's shooting campaign to an end.

Bangladesh's individual participation in the 18th Asian Games will end with sprinter Sumi Akter's 800m dash in the morning while the hockey team will continue their journey in the group stages.