Ace archer Jayanta Talukdar once again failed to make it to the Indian team for the 44th World Outdoor Target Archery Championships scheduled to be held in Leipzig from July 7 to 15.

The teams were selected after two selection trials at the SAI, Eastern Centre in Kolkata today.

The women’s recurve team saw no change from the one that participated in the third World Cup in Turkey earlier in the month. But Somai Murmu, the 25-year-old Army havildar from Jamshedpur, displaced Priyank from the men’s squad that travelled to Turkey.

There, in the first Super Eight qualifier, Murmu had beaten Tarundeep Rai in the final and Rahul Banerjee in the semi-finals. That was before he had beaten Talukdar.

In the trials it was another Armyman, Chungda Sherpa, who hogged the limelight clinching the third spot at the expense of Delhi’s Rajwant Singh. The Delhi archer, who was fifth before the two trials, picked up seven points in the first Super Eight by reaching the final. Sherpa defeated Rajwant in the crucial semi-final of the second Super Eight and finished second best to Ch. Lenin of Andhra Pradesh in the final. At the end of the two qualifiers, both Sherpa and Singh earned 13 points each, but the four-point lead Sherpa enjoyed before today’s proceeding carried him through to the team.

The technical committee has, meanwhile, decided to recommend Sumanlata Murmu, a junior, who has accompanied the Indian junior team to Chinese Taipei’s second Asian Junior Grand Prix, to join the two seniors, national champion Jhano Hansdah and Bheigyabati Chanu in the women’s compound side.

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