The poster girl of Indian squash paired up with Joshna Chinappa in 2014 to win India’s first Commonwealth Games gold medal in squash in Glasgow.
Dipika Pallikal (Squash)
She also won medals in World Championships, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, and became the first Indian woman to be ranked in the top 10.
Dipika gave birth to twin boys in October 2021 and won the mixed doubles bronze at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022.
The Hangzhou Asian Game is believedlikely to be Dipika’s swan song.
Koneru Humpy (Chess)
The Grandmaster is one of India’s finest chess players. She became the youngest woman to achieve the Grandmaster title when she was 15 in 2002 and became the second female to exceed the 2600 Elo rating.
Humpy gave birth to a girl in 2017.
She became the women’s World Rapid champion in 2019 and was the runner-up in the Fide Women’s Grand Prix 2019-21 edition.
The 36-year-old will be competing in the singles as well as team events in Hangzhou.
Harika Dronavalli (Chess)
The 32-year-old three-time World Championship medallist played at the Chess Olympiad last year, when she was nine months pregnant.
Harika and her teammates Koneru Humpy, R. Vaishali, Tania Sachdev and Bhakti Kulkarni won the women’s team bronze at the Chess Olympiad – a first for India in the women’s section – days before she gave birth to a girl.
Harika will be looking to add to her mantelpiece another Asian Games medal to join her individual bronze from the 2010 Guangzhou Games.
Manpreet Kaur (Shot Put)
The national record holder from Punjab competed at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games before taking a three-year break after giving birth to a girl.
In 2016, she became the only Indian woman to qualify for the Rio Olympics in shot put but was handed a four-year doping ban in July 2017.
Manpreet made a strong comeback last year – she broke her own national record with an 18.06m throw, becoming the first Indian woman to cross 18m in shot put.
Indo-Asian News Service
