Two pairs of shooters were bang on target while the grapplers made a clean sweep of all three titles at stake as India grabbed five gold medals to climb to the second spot in the medals table below Australia in the Commonwealth Games on Tuesday.

The Indian men’s 10m air rifle pair of Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra and world record holder Gagan Narang started the gold rush for the country which was sustained by women shooters Rahi Sarnobat and Anisa Sayeed who picked up the pairs 25m pistol event for women in style.

Two more silver medals came India’s way from the Dr Karni Singh shooting range before greco-roman style grapplers Ravinder Singh (60 kg), Sanjay (74 kg) and Anil Kumar (96kg) made a clean sweep of all three gold medals on offer from the wrestling mat to round off a splendid day for the hosts.

The two silver medals were earned by Deepak Sharma and Omkar Singh, in the men’s 50m pistol pairs event, and the woman’s duo of world champion Tejaswini Sawant and Lajjakumari Gauswami, who stood second in the pairs 50m rifle 3 position.

The five gold and two silver medals boosted the hosts’ overall medal tally to 5-4-2 on the second day of competitions after the weightlifers gave the country two silver and as many bronze medals on Monday.

The three wrestling gold medals pitchforked India to the second place behind Australia after England overtook the home country briefly through their first two golds from the pool won by Liam John Tancock (men’s 50m backstroke) and Francesca Jean Halsall (women’s 50m butterlfly).

Indian shuttlers continued to dominate by dumping Barbados 5-0 after having inflicted a similar defeat to Kenya yesterday in the mixed team event.

P Kashyap shone on debut while Saina Nehwal continued her rampaging run.

They were well supported by the mixed doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and V Diju as well as the men’s and women’s doubles combine of Sanave Thomas and Rupesh Kumar and Aparna Balan and Ashwini Ponnappa.

In tennis, men’s top seed Somdev Devvarman rallied from 1-4 down against little known Devin Mullings of Bahamas before progressing to the pre-quarterfinals with a straight-set win.

Elsewhere, Indian swimmer Virdhawal Khade was the lone competitor to remain in fray from seven others when he made the semifinals of the 50m buttefly.

Khade, who on Monday helped the men’s freestyle sprint quartet to become the first from the country to reach a swimming final in Games history, clocked 24.72s for eighth position.

But six others – Arjun Muralidharan (Men’s 50m fly), Jyotsana Pansare, Fariha Zaman (women’s 100m backstroke), Talasha Satish Prabhu (women’s 100m freestyle), Aaron D’Souza and Rohit Havaldar (men’s 200m freestyle) hardly made a splash and exited.

Para sport swimmers brought some smiles as Kiran Tak (00:38.79) and Anjani Patel (00:47.64) progressed to the semifinals in the 50m S9 Freestyle women category.