Indian shuttlers confirm 5 medals at Badminton Asia Junior Championships
Indian shuttlers Unnati Hooda, Gnana Dattu, Anish Thoppani along with a couple of doubles pairs marched into the semifinals to assure country of five medals at the Badminton Asia U-17 & U-15 Junior Championships 2022 in Nonthaburi, Thailand on Friday.
The doubles pairs of Arsh Mohammad and Sanskar Saraswat, and Bjorn Jaison and Aathish Sreenivas PV also confirmed medals for India apart from the above mentioned singles trio.
Indian shuttlers had grabbed five medals in 2018 while they won two in the 2019 edition. The prestigious continental event is being conducted after two years following the pandemic.
Junior world No. 4 Unnati continued her sensational run as she outclassed South Koreas Min Ji Kim in the U-17 womens singles quarterfinals in straight games 21-15 21-18. Top-seed Unnati will now face Japans Milon Yokouchi in the semifinals.
Dattu and Anish, on the other hand, had to work hard in their U-15 mens singles last-eight contests against their Indonesian opponents before wrapping up the matches in three sets.
While the seventh seeded Dattu got the better of fourth-seed Radithya Wardhana 21-11 13-21 21-11, Anish claimed a 22-20 19-21 21-12 win over fifth seeded Glend Rumondor to confirm a last-four berth.
Dattu and Anish will be up against Chinese Taipeis Chung-Hsiang Yih and Lee Yu-Jui respectively in the semifinals.
Meanwhile, in-form U-17 mens doubles pair of Arsh and Sanskar earned a hard-fought victory against Indonesias Nawaf Khoiriyansyah and Adriel Leonardo by 24-22 20-22 21-15.
And then, the duo of Bjorn and Aathish added a second doubles medal to Indias tally when they clinched a come-from-behind 16-21 21-12 21-17 victory against Chinese Taipeis Sheng-Ming Lin and Chla-Yu Tsai in the U-15 mens doubles category.
The U-17 mixed doubles pair of Mayank Rana and Jiya Rawat and U-15 womens doubles pair of Tanvi Andluri and Durga Kandrapu ended their campaigns with quarterfinal defeats.
The semifinals will take place on Saturday, while finals will be played on Sunday.
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