Desert Storm 2017 Suresh Rana Leads Rally

Himachal This Week

The Manali man Suresh Rana is proving his mettle once again in the 15th edition of Maruti Suzuki Desert Storm. The ten times Raid De Himalaya Champion and four times Desert Storm winner is leading the chart this year too after the leg 4. Driving a Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara, along with his navigator Ashwin Naik, Suresh Rana of Team Maruti checked into a time control early, which meant that they incurred a 16 minute penalty that pushed them down the order to the third place during the second leg. But he managed to move back into the lead in the leg 3 and 4. Niju Padia and navigator Nirav Mehta  in their Mitsubishi Pajero slotted into second place. Third place at the end of Leg 4 is occupied by Sandeep Sharma and Karan Arya in their Gypsy. In the Moto category, Hero MotoSports Team Rally’s CS Santosh still retains first place, followed by R Nataraj and Tanveer Abdul Wahid who are in second and third place. In the Ndure category of the event, competitors are set the task of calculating time, speed, distance, and avoiding penalties. This category saw Arpit Gupta, with T Nagarajan as navigator, in the lead.

3 Himachali Boxers Shine In Inter-University Championship

Himachal This Week, Shimla

Himachali boxers brought laurels to the state by winning three medals in the All India Inter University Boxing Championship held in Jalandhar. Himachali women boxers including Pema, Shashi Kala Negi and Pratibha showed their fantastic play and bagged two silver and one bronze medal. Divya Himachal Excellence Award winner Shashi Kala Negi had to satisfy only with a silver medal, as she couldn’t win the final match. Whereas, Pratibha also secured silver medal for the state. Pema from Narkanda bagged a bronze medal. After this championship, Shashi Kala Negi has also been selected for the national training camp. It is being speculated that she could also make it to international squad.

Himachal Wins National Fistball Championship

Participating for the first time in National Fistball Championship, Himachali team sealed the winner’s trophy also in the event held at Panipat in Haryana. Various teams from across the country participated in this championship. The team had been performing extremely well from the beginning of the championship and defeated well known teams including Madhya Pradesh, Haryana,  Delhi, Karnataka and Kerala to enter the final. Himachali team defeated Telangana which included international players by 11-6, 11-5, 11-6 in the final. Himachal’s Bhawna was also declared best player of the championship.

About Fistball

Fistball is a sport of European origin and is similar to volleyball. The current men’s Fistball World Champion is Germany, winners of both the 2011 World Championships and the Fistball category at the 2013 World Games. Fistball is a team sport in which two teams compete against each other on two half-fields, similar to volleyball. They are separated by a center line and a net stretched between two posts up to two meters in height. Touching net or post is considered an error. Each team consists of five players, with players try to play the ball across the net from one half to the opponents’ half – using only their arm or closed fist (unlike in volleyball where open hands are allowed) . After clearing the net, the ball may be contacted up to three times by five players on each team – with a bounce being permissible before each contact (also unlike in volleyball where no bounce is allowed). But no repeat hits by any individual player are allowed within the three attempts. Similar to volleyball, the three hits are ideally used to save, set and spike the ball back into the opponents half, in that order.

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