Lord’s will be lucky for us: Rahul Banerjee

Rahul Banerjee spoke to Zeenews.com on chances of winning medal at the prestigious event and his excitement at competing on the ground known to the world as the `Mecca of Cricket`.

Vineet Ramakrishnan & Feroz Khan

Indian men archery team beat Australia to enter the final of the Olympic qualification round to book their London berths. Riding high on confidence, the team will be looking to tame the windy conditions at the much revered Lord`s to enter their names in the history books by clinching a medal at the London Olympics. Zeenews.com caught up with archer Rahul Banerjee who spoke on the chances of winning medal at the prestigious event and his excitement at competing on the ground known to the world as the `Mecca of Cricket`. How helpful was the conditioning camp at Gangtok? The preparation at Gangtok before the qualifications was helpful. We spent around 20 days there and it helped us not just with the `acclimatising with the wind’ factor but, since we used to train for near about 8-9 hours daily, it also served us well during the qualification. It was because of this that we were able to make the cut for the Olympics with a good score even after I`d missed quite a number of shots. Before Olympics, qualifying with such a big score has been an extra motivating factor for us. How would you analyse your team members? Tarundeep and I have been performing well for the last few months. We have been playing together for the past three years. We have participated in Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and then the World Cup. So the coordination between us will be the key factor in the windy conditions at London. What about the women`s team? Well, they are world No 2 and obviously they are favourites for a medal and Deepika is the world`s number one archer at present. At the same time, you cannot predict that the best in the world will win because the wind and the performance on the particular day will be a decisive factor. How excited are you about plying your trade at the Lord`s? Well, it is the Mecca of Cricket. I have been told it will be lucky for us. It will be a proud moment when archery will be organised on the cricket ground for the first time, but at the same time it is just an archery field for us which is of more significant. We don`t want to take any extra pressure and want to continue with the good performance of the last few tournaments.