Aakarshi Kashyap & Priyanshu Rajawat win All India Junior Ranking Tournament

India’s top-ranked Under-19 shuttler Aakarshi Kashyap lived up to everybody’s expectations and performed beyond brilliant as she beat qualifier Kavipriya S in straight games. This made her win the girls’ singles title at the All India Junior Ranking Tournament held at Tirupur on Sunday.

Aakarshi, a 16-year-old from Bhilai in Chhattisgarh came into the tournament as the top seed and allowed us to witness a phenomenal performance. She finished the match in only 36 minutes by winning the first two games with 21-8 and 21-11. She now trains at the Prakash Padukone Academy in Bengaluru and we with the kind of game she got, she kept us all vouching for her performances ahead.

To everybody’s surprise, qualifier Priyanshu Rajawat won over Kiran George the fifth seed by 21-14, 19-21, 21-16 in a match that lasted 52 minutes. He is a 16- year-old from Dhar in Madhya Pradesh and was playing his 14^th match in the last six days. He was also a participant in mixed doubles.

In mixed doubles, Priyanshu partnered with Ananya Goel lost it to top seeds Sai Kumar Podile and Srishti Jupudi after coming through three rounds of qualification in mixed doubles.

In the boys’ singles category, Priyanshu went through four qualification rounds before playing six more matches till Sunday.

 Except for his quarter-final game against Amit Rathore, all of his matches went the distance into three games.

 However, the 16-year-old left us all amazed as he went all out to go on to the top in the final against a much fresher Kiran George.

Priyanshu defeated three seeded players before he got the title, who included India’s No 1 junior Aman Farogh Sanjay, whom he beat 21-12, 16-21, 22-24 in the semi-finals. Priyanshu had earlier beaten third seed Dhruv Rawat 21-16, 18-21, 29-27 in an extremely demanding match.

Aiming for the better in Indonesia

When asked about how he got through those difficult matches and what kept him going through and delivering all along the tournament, Priyanshu said that he had an eye on Indonesia coming into Tirupur. “This tournament serves as a selection event for the Junior Asian Team Championship [in Indonesia in July] so that motivated me to perform well,” he said.

“It feels great to win the title, especially after beating the top-ranked players including the India No 1. I would like to thank my coaches at the Gopichand Academy for this triumph,” he added.

Priyanshu began playing badminton at the age of eight in Dhar under coach Sudhir Verma. Sudhir Verma is the father of India internationals Sameer Verma and Sourabh Verma. After two years, at ten, he moved to the Gopichand Academy in Hyderabad.

Priyanshu and Aakarshi will now both train for the senior ranking tournaments in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. These two tournaments serve as selection trials for the Asian Games in August.

Earlier on Sunday, Sri Krishna and Srishti went on to lift the mixed doubles title.

 Both of them had also participated in the boys’ and girls’ doubles finals with their respective partners but suffered loss.

On the other hand, the girls’ doubles title was won by top seeds Simran Singhi and Ritika Thaker, while the boys’ doubles champions were second seeds Manjit Singh Khwairakpam and Dingku Sing Konthoujam.

The winners in the singles category were awarded with Rs 39,000 each, while the doubles champions were awarded prize money of Rs 41,000

According to the Badminton Association of India release, they gave away a total of Rs 4,00,000 to the players who qualified for the knockout stages of the tournament.