Asian Games: India win their first golds as China continue golden run

India won their first golds and North Koreans stirred up drama by snubbing their South Korean rivals on the podium on day two of the Hangzhou Asian Games on Monday.

India's first gold came in the men's 10 metre air rifle team before their women's cricketers beat Sri Lanka by 19 runs to clinch a second gold, the country's first in cricket since the sport joined the quadrennial Asian Games in Guangzhou in 2010.

Earlier the Bangladesh women's cricket team beat Pakistan in the bronze match to claim the country's first Asian Games medal since 2014 at Incheon, South Korea.

Cricket, which has hopes of becoming an Olympic sport, returned to the Asian Games this year after being omitted from the last edition in Indonesia in 2018.

Hosts China enjoyed success again, taking their gold tally to 39 golds at the end of the second full day of action.

South Korea and Japan are their closest competitors with a distant 10 and five golds respectively.

China picked up golds in artistic gymnastics, swimming, skateboarding, taekwondo, mountain biking, fencing, wushu, shooting and rowing. But Uzbekistan stole some of their thunder by pipping the hosts to gold in the men's four and women's single skulls.

The single skulls winner, Anna Prakaten, came into the event with some pedigree having won silver at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 whilst representing the Russian Olympic Committee.

Another who upset China's party was Thailand's Panipak Wongpattanakit who leapt for joy after beating local fighter Guo Qing 2-1 in a tight and dramatic contest in the women's -49kg taekwondo final.

It was Thailand's first gold of the Games and triggered a roar of delight from several Thai journalists watching in the Games' media centre.

In the pool several Games records tumbled including the women's 200m freestyle where Hong Kong's Siobhan Bernadette Haughey won in one minute 54.12 smashing the previous mark by over two seconds but shy of her Asian record at the Tokyo Olympics.

Meanwhile, three North Korean marksmen refused to join their South Korean rivals in a group photo of medal winners after narrowly missing out on gold in a men's team shooting competition.

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