World Junior Championships: Early conquers of team India

Indian juniors begun their campaign with the winning note at the World Junior Championships, started on 16th October at Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The championship witness players from 64 nations, 561 matches with 154 entries in Men’s Singles; 135 in Women’s Singles; 87 in Men’s Doubles; 75 in Women’s Doubles and 115 in Mixed Doubles. 

The tournament started off with a superb win of Pullela Gayatri against the Poland’s Wiktoria Dabzynska with 21-8, 21-12, later, with an amazing defeat over Anicka Bestbier of Russia with 21-4, 21-11 in just 15 minutes and marched into the next rounds to face Jaqueline Lima of Brazil. In another match of women’s singles, eighth seeded Aakarshi Kashyap trounced Hana Mohamed with 21-9, 21-4 in 15 minutes.

It was a double delight for Rahul Bharadwaj too, after thrashing Mohammad Arsalaan Ali of Maldives with 21-3, 21-4 in a rocket speed 14 minute contest, followed by another win against Alex Popov of Bulgaria with 21-5, 21-6.

Former world no.1 Lakshya Sen, smacked the early win against Mate Balint of Hungary with 21-5, 21-5 in the 17-minute contest in men’s singles, and the thirteenth seeded Kartikey Gulshan Kumar ended the match with an ease against Tymoteusk Malik of Poland with 21-7, 21-9.

While all the Indians seized their matches within 30 minutes, it took 41 minutes for Ashmita Chaliha to defeat Thi Phuong Thuy Tran of Vietnam. After the convenient win in the first game with 21-13, the Indian lost the pace in the second game and trailed by 6 straight points to reach 10-4 and eventually lost the game with 14-21. In the decider, the game was a bit closer between the opponents till the half time with 11-9 advantage to the Indian, followed by dominating upper hand to seal the match with 21-19.

In the doubles category, women shuttlers Malvika Bansod and Deeksha Choudhary outplayed Katherine Sarai Lara Guzman and Camila Navas of El Salvador with 21-5, 21-6 in 20 minutes, and Sanjai Srivatsa Dhanraj with Siddarth Elango of men’s doubles blowed Uriel Francisco Canjura Artiga and Carlos Henrriquez of El Salvador with 21-10, 21-5.

Indian team faced couple of losses; in women’s singles, Purva Barve after tasting the win in the first game, lost to Asty Dwi Widyaningrum of Indonesia in the straight games with 19-21, 13-21, 16-21 and Aryamann Tandon of men’s singles bowed out with 21-10, 21-12 against Kodai Naraoka of Japan.

The shuttlers cruised into next rounds, will play for round 5 of the tournament, today.