Gautam shocks Vikrant, Asawari champ

Asawari Patwardhan (Mumbai Customs) took the women’s crown defeating Firoza Batliwala (Western Railway) 11-7, 11-5 in 14 minutes. Sweet revenge for the former who had lost to Batliwala in straight games in the Maharashtra State Selection tournament at Nagpur a week back.

The men’s final was easily the match of the tournament. Patwardhan (Mumbai Customs) went into a 8-3 lead early on but Gautam (Central Railway) caught up to level scores 8-8. The game, though, went in the favour of the former who played some aggressive badminton.

The patient Gautam played the waiting game once again, just as he had done against Manohar Kanchawade yesterday in the semifinal. It was best illustrated in the second game with Gautam leading 12-10. Everytime Patwardhan smashed, Gautam put the shuttle right back into play. The No 2 seed took the point and the game 15-13.

Gautam quickly went 11-1 ahead in the third game. The error-prone Patwardhan, for whom “nothing worked”, went down 4-15 to 21-year-old Gautam whose success formula was simple — “Make no mistakes”.

Asawari just had to “play her normal game”. The top seed was too strong and used her height to good advantage against Batliwala. Batliwala admitted to playing too many tournaments, her third this month, after having a knee operation three months back.

The indefatigable Behzaad Devadhvala, playing three matches everyday on an average, won the boy’s singles and doubles. He defeated his doubles partner Harshad Tawde 15-3, 15-8 in 27 minutes. Tawde fought back in the second game after losing the first and went into a 7-4 lead. However, he started making errors and Devadhvala just plugged on to emerge victorious. The two had won the doubles yesterday.

Neha Gangoli added the sub-junior girl’s singles title to the two she had won yesterday by defeating doubles partner Jhanvi Lakhani 11-5, 11-5.

The junior boys’ and sub-junior boys’ winners get the Parvatidevi Kejriwal Charitable scholarship, while the girls’ and sub-junior girls’ winners get the Lifebouy scholarship.

Results (finals): Men’s singles: Vivek Gautam bt Vikrant Patwardhan 9-15, 15-13, 15-4

Men’s doubles (final): Vikrant Patwardhan & Kunal Vaswani bt Ayaz Billawala & Amol Shah 15-10, 11-15, 15-6.

Boy’s singles: Behzaad Devadhvala bt Harshad Tawade 15-3, 15-8

Boy’s doubles: Behzaad Devadhvala and Harshad Tawade bt Rushab Modi and S Shah 15-10, 15-1

Sub-junior boy’s singles: Deepak Jaitly bt Abhishek Kejriwal 15-1, 15-6

Midget boy’s singles: Dilpreet Singh Sahani bt Zarir Warden 15-6, 15-9

Women’s singles: Asawari Patwardhan bt Firoza Batliwala 11-7, 11-5

Women’s doubles: Asawari Patwardhan and Varsha Shah bt Hufrish Nariman and Neha Gangoli 15-12, 15-9

Girl’s singles: Neha Gangoli bt Jhanvi Lakhani 11-2, 11-2

Sub-junior girl’s singles: Neha Gangoli bt Jhanvi Lakhani 11-5, 11-5.

Doubles: Neha Gangoli-Jhanvi Lakhani bt Ramya Venkat -Charmy Sethia 15-11, 15-3

Midget girl’s singles: Shivani Mayekar bt Aditi Kulkarni 11-4, 11-3.

Top seeds ousted: Top seed Vijay Lancy crashed out of the Suburban badminton tournament semifinal at MIG Cricket Club today. He lost to Bhushan Akut 10-15, 15-18.

And that was not the only upset of the day. Top seed Nazneen Karimi lost to Kajal Puri in straight games 11-3, 12-10 in the women’s semifinal, while Gauri Narayan of MIG defeated second seed Sim Sim Salaria 11-4, 11-8.

Narayan also entered the girl’s under-19 final beating Kajal Puri in the semifinal 11-3, 5-11, 11-5 and meets Salaria in the final.

Results

Men’s singles (semifinal): Bhushan Akut bt Vijay Lancy 15-10, 18-15;

(Quarter-finals): Vijay Lancy bt Sushant Niddodi 15-5, 15-7; Bhushan Akut bt Parag Modi 15-10, 15-3; Bunty Gujaral bt Milind Ghate 15-10, 15-2; Mayur Tawade bt Karan Modi 15-4, 15-2

Boy’s under-19 singles (semifinals): Sushant Niddodi bt Karan Modi 15-6, 15-9; Imran Shaukat bt Rohan R 14-15, 15-9, 15-6

Boy’s under-16 singles (semifinals): Puneet Patel bt Sunil Kamat 15-8, 15-13; Amit Singh bt Himanshu Thakkar 7-15, 15-11, 15-11

Girl’s under-19 singles (semifinals): Sim Sim Salaria bt Anut Wadke 6-11, 11-1, 11-2; Gauri Narayan bt Kajal Puri 11-3, 5-11, 11-5

Men’s doubles (QFs): Bunty Gujral and Mayur Tawade bt Amit Desai and Gautam Patki 15-2, 15-5; Bhushan Akut and Vijay Lancy bt Sethu Madhu and J Kotian 15-0, 15-0; Anil Pradhan and Murjani bt N Nandkumar and V Karmarkar 15-5, 15-3; Sanjeev Patki and Shirish Nadkarni bt HK Singh and Anand Rao 15-9, 15-2

Deorukhkar wins: Top seed Sumedh Deorukhkar won the sub-junior boy’s singles title when he defeated Merric Gonsalves 15-4, 15-3 in the Thane District championship final. He later won the doubles with Anupam Singh, defeating Gonsalves and Anshiman Singh 15-7, 15-8.Results

Junior boy’s doubles (semifinal): Nimish Goel and Bhushan Paithonkar bt Anish Kaneokar and Aditya Kulkarni 15-4, 15-5

Midget boy’s doubles (final): Praveen Upadhyay and Onkar Bagat bt Sudeep Joshi and Sagar Hande 15-3, 15-8Midget girl’s (semifinal): Purna Misra bt Shweta Khare 11-2, 11-7