India approves 492-athlete contingent for Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games

Cricket will once again bring its share of marquee names to India’s Asian Games campaign, with both men’s and women’s T20 teams cleared for the Aichi-Nagoya continental multisport event. But athletics remains the backbone of the 492-athlete contingent approved by the sports ministry, accounting for the largest number of entries in the list accessed by TOI.

The contingent comprises 265 male and 227 female athletes and will compete across 35 disciplines at the Games, scheduled from Sept 19 to Oct 4. The list of accompanying support staff has not yet been issued. Athletics leads the numbers with 73 athletes (35 men, 38 women), followed by hockey 40, shooting 30 and cricket 30. Kabaddi has 24, rowing 22, sepak takraw 21, badminton 20, fencing 20, wrestling 16 and esports 15.

The athletics squad features Olympic and world champion Neeraj Chopra, along with Murali Sreeshankar, Gulveer Singh, Animesh Kujur, Tejaswin Shankar and Jyothi Yarraji. The 30-member cricket contingent includes Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Varun Chakravarthy, Shivam Dube, Shreyas Iyer, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ishan Kishan, Washington Sundar, Tilak Varma, Axar Patel, Harshit Rana, Abhishek Sharma, Arshdeep Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Sanju Samson. The women’s team comprises Renuka Thakur, Arundhati Reddy, Shafali Varma, Harmanpreet Kaur, Bharti Fulmali, Kranti Gaud, Richa Ghosh, Kamalini Gunalan, Smriti Mandhana, Sree Charani, Shreyanka Patil, Pratika Rawal, Deepti Sharma, Nandani Sharma and Radha Yadav.

Badminton’s 20-strong group includes PV Sindhu, Lakshya Sen, Ayush Shetty, Satwik Rankireddy, Chirag Shetty, Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly. Boxing has 11 athletes, including Lovlina Borgohain, Narender Berwal and Jadumani Singh. “Expenditure on transfer of boats/ equipment/ horses for sports of rowing, yachting, canoeing, and any other sports specific requirements, may be reimbursed to the NSF concerned by SAI after ascertaining the reasonability of rate and obtaining a certificate of reasonability from the NSF concerned," the contingent notification read.