The Hindu : Moraad keeps his cool, takes title

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003

Sport

Sport - Shooting

Moraad keeps his cool, takes title

By A. Joseph Antony

Moraad Ali Khan, the winner of the men's clay pigeon double trap event. — Photo: Mohammed Yousuf

HYDERABAD Dec. 9. In fast fading light, the electricity supply failed too. After 38 shots were fired in the men's double trap event, the voice activators did not respond to calls from the shooters. The leading contenders, Moraad Ali Khan and Ronjon Singh Sodhi, just one point separating the former from the latter, stretched out on the grass to take a breather.

For a sport that calls for intense concentration, this definitely was a spanner in the works. Not for Moraad Ali Khan though, who sprang back into the fray, clung to his solitary point lead, kept his cool and walked away with the crown. The 40-year-old Head of Community Relations at Tata Teleservices, Delhi felt Hyderabad was lucky for him.

"One needs to get used to disturbances but get the concentration back too," he remarked of the disruption in the final. It took under a minute to get back that unflinching focus on the fleeing `birds.'

His motto seemed pretty simple on the face of it: Shoot everything that leaves the trench. Sure enough, his reflexes were exceptional. No sooner than the clay pigeons left the pits, his weapon roared, powdering the clay at times. Occasionally there were orange fumes when the bullets decimated the targets receding at 90 kmph, as the muzzle of his Perazzi MX-8 `smoked.' Rarely did the beeper go to signal a miss. In the recent past, India had clinched 17 medals in international clay target shooting alone. Shooting standards had climbed considerably, said Moraad. A three-year hiatus from the sport didn't seem to rob the sheen of his accuracy. To the spectators, Moraad was his jocular self, enjoying his trade, even joking with archrival Sodhi, who was his Delhi teammate for a decade.

In contrast to Sodhi's feeble call, his pin-point precision found him downing the `pigeons' without a miss for quite a while. In the final round, he matched Moraad, point for point, each tallying 47.

In the junior category, Asab Ali improved on his personal best of 108 out of 150, posted in Delhi last year, to 110. For the eleventh standard student of D.N. College, Meerut, it was his third successive win. The silver went to sibling Masad Ahmed Rizvi, representing Infantry Kids.

The results:

Double trap: Men: 1. Moraad Ali Khan (AP) 177 (130 + 47); 2. Ronjon Singh Sodhi (Pun) 176 (129 + 47); 3. D.B. Thapa (Army) 169 (123 + 46); 4. Hemraj (Army) 161 (119 + 42); 5. B. Ashok (TN) 144 (107 + 37); 6. Asab Ali (UP) 143 (110 + 33).

Juniors: 1. Asab Ali (UP) 110; 2. Masad Ahmed Rizvi (Infantry Kids) 99; 3. Allan Daniel Peoples (Infantry Kids) 95.

Women: 1. Seema Tomar (Infantry Kids) 66; 2. Bharti Singh (Infantry Kids) 53; 3. Sumathi Muthalagan (TN) 51.

Teams: 1. Army (Hemraj, D.B. Thapa and I.J. Peoples) 334/450; 2. AP (Moraad Ali Khan, M.D. Vikram and Gautam) 317; 3. UP (Romi Shiv, Asab Ali, SS Yadav).

Centre fire pistol (leading positions after precision round): Men: 1. Mahavir Singh (Army) 292/300; 2. Raj Khalid (Mah) 286.

Juniors: 1. Ronak Pandit (Mah) 291; 2. Mohit Kohli (Del) 269.

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