Shuttler Samarveer bags two silver in Nationals
December 23, 2019
Local shuttler Samarveer brought laurels to the city by winning a silver medal in the Sub Junior National Badminton Championships, which concluded in Bhubaneswar today.
Samarveer claimed the second position in the boys’ doubles event. Samarveer and Rizul Saini suffered a 14-21 16-21 defeat against Swetaparna and Satvik Reddy of Telangana. Earlier, Samarveer and Saini ousted Muskan and Sunny Nehra 21-10 21-9 of Haryana to move into the final. Samarveer had also represented India in the Asian Championships, held in Indonesia last month. Priyank Bharti, president of the Chandigarh Badminton Association, and Surinder Mahajan, secretary of CBA, said they would honour the silver medallists and their coach Vivek Sharma.
Meanwhile, Haryana’s Anupama Upadhyaya and Assam’s Tonmoy Bikash Boruah both caused big upsets to be crowned the U-15 champions in the girls’ singles and boys’ singles, respectively. Seeded second Upadhyaya was up against the top seed Tara Shah of Maharashtra. Having won the first game, the Haryana girl’s momentum dropped in the second as Shah made a comeback. But Upadhyaya was able to rebound in style to complete a 21-17, 15-21, 21-11 win in 55 minutes.
Boruah had it easier against the second seed Ankit Mondal of West Bengal. The sixth seed refused to put a foot wrong in his 21-16 21-18 demolition of Mondal. Boruah, however, failed to win the doubles crown. The third-seeded pair of Boruah and Lakshay Sharma went down fighting 14-21, 21-18, 10-21 to the eighth seeds Sanskar Saraswat and Bhuvan Singh of Rajasthan in the boys’ doubles final.
In the U-15 category, the third-seeded Tamil Nadu pair of Gnanadha Karthikeyan and Sania Sikkandar took 24 minutes to prevail over second seeds Gayathri Rani Jaiswal and Karnika Sree 21-7 21-15.
The top-seeded Telengana-Odisha pair of Sathwik Reddy and Swetaparna Panda beat the third seeds Samarveer and Rijul Saini 21-14 21-8 to take the mixed doubles title. Tara Shah lost the U-17 girls’ singles final as well. Uttar Pradesh girl Mansi Singh, also the top seed, proved too strong for the 14th seeded Shah to take the title with a commanding 21-11 21-6 win. The boys’ singles category witnessed an upset as the eighth-seeded Tamil Nadu boy Rithvik Sanjeevi made short work of sixth seed Pranay Katta 21-15 21-14. Sixth-seeded Karnataka duo of Suhas and Janani edged Hariharan and Praveena 23-21 28-26 to claim the U-17 mixed doubles title.
