Das returns to national teams as India names squad for first two World Cup stages
Seasoned archer Atanu Das returns to the senior Indian team announced for the first and second stages of the Hyundai Archery World Cup 2025 in April and May, bringing a wealth of experience to the team that achieved decent success last season.
The 32-year-old, who last competed on the outdoor circuit at Paris 2023, missed last year’s action failing to qualify in the Olympic year selection trials.
“It feels good to be back,” said Das. “All the changes, risks are taken well, everything is going good as of now.”
Having made significant changes to his game – right from training approach to coach – Das finished third in the selection process held at the regional training centre of Kolkata last month, when the top four made it to the squad.
He is joined by Dhiraj Bommadevara, four-time Olympian Tarundeep Rai, both of whom were also part of India’s gold medal winning team in the first stage of the 2024 Hyundai Archery World Cup in Shanghai, and Parth Sushant Salunkhe in the recurve men’s line-up.
Salunkhe was individual champion at the 2023 World Archery Youth Championships in Limerick.
Das, who was part of India’s recurve men’s team that won silver at the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games, is also joined by his wife and former world number one Deepika Kumari, who returns to the women’s squad for the second year running after becoming a mother in December 2023.
Both Atanu and Deepika have been training under Rahul Banerjee for the past six months at the former international archer’s archery academy in Kolkata.
“We have upgraded lots of minor details in our shooting form, which is helping us to be stress free,” added Das, detailing his current training programme.
He won a bronze medal at a national ranking tournament in August before taking bronze in the recurve men’s event at the Swiss Open Lausanne indoor event in November.
“There’s no big expectations but I want to be in the world top five in 2025,” concluded Das about his goals for the year.
India’s recurve women’s roster for the first two stages of the 2025 season includes Paris 2024 Olympian Ankita Bhakat, Simranjeet Kaur and debutant Anshika Kumari alongside Deepika.
While Bhakat and Kaur were part of the Indian recurve women’s team that won a historic silver medal at the Asian Games, Anshika was runner-up to Deepika at the National Games, India’s own multisport event inspired by the Olympics, in Uttarakhand earlier this month.
Indian team for 2025
- Recurve men: Dhiraj Bommadevara, Tarundeep Rai, Atanu Das and Parth Sushant Salunkhe.
- Recurve women: Ankita Bhakat, Deepika Kumari, Simranjeet Kaur and Anshika Kumari.
- Compound men: Abhishek Verma, Rishabh Yadav, Ojas Pravin Deotale and Uday Kamboj.
- Compound women: Madhura Dhamangaonkar, Jyothi Surekha Vennam, Taniparthi Chikitha and Aditi Swami.
