New Delhi, India (AHN) – At the Commonwealth Games (CWG) New Delhi 2010, Friday turned out to be another gold rush for India as it consolidated its tally with an impressive haul of 14 medals, including 6 Gold. With its Friday’s performance, the Indian contingent made sure that the country remained well ensconced in its second position on the medal table.

Besides the Gold, India bagged five Silver medals and 3 more Bronze. Over the last five days of the CWG 2010, India has won 20 Gold, 16 Silver and 12 Bronze medals. With a total of 48 medals in just 5 days, India is second only to Australia in the medals tally with the latter having 99 medals to its credit so far.

However, Australia’s smooth run at the CWG hit a minor roadblock on Friday when its athlete, Sally Pearson, was unceremoniously disqualified from her 100m win for a false start.

However, the disqualification came amidst a lot of drama during which one of the Australian athletics officials accused England of “payback” because the officials failed to inform Pearson in time about her disqualification. As a result of which, Pearson was allowed to do a lap of honor with the Australian flag and even walk half way to the medal podium, leading to an embarrassing situation for the athlete, the participating country but, most of all, the athletics officials involved.

The reason behind the Australian protest could be the fact that Pearson’s disqualification cleared the way for England’s Katherine Endacott for a Bronze medal in the event.

While registering her protest, Australia’s Athletics Victoria Chief Executive Nick Honey said, “It goes back, I think, to the last Commonwealth Games (2006). With the 4x400m relay for the girls and the Australians, we informed the officials and got the English girls disqualified, so it might be a bit of payback.”

Even Mike Fennell, president of the CWG Federation, expressed sympathy with Pearson, saying, “A number of things happen concurrently; the results are announced, then you’re allowed a certain time to make a protest. Someone did not communicate that a protest was being made. It was a major communication blunder by the officials at the athletics.”

Meanwhile, the past five days also proved once again that if there is any other sport which is second only to cricket as far as India’s sports-frenzy fans are concerned, it is the tennis. During the first week of Commonwealth Games New Delhi 2010, the home crowd was treated to world class tennis action as tennis stars Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Somdev Devvarman and Sania Mirza played their respective games. However, by the end of the week on Friday, that is the fifth day of the sports event, lot of that had fizzled out with both Paes and Bhupathi suffering defeat in the semi-finals. Only Devvarman and Mirza made it to the men’s and women’s singles finals, respectively.

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