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Journalism of Courage
Newly-crowned junior world no. 1 Junior Lakshya Sen notched up a straight-game win over Mumbai’s Harsheel Dani to storm into the finals of men’s singles competition at the 81st Senior Badminton National Championship.
The 15-year-old from Uttarakhand, playing his first Nationals, stunned Dani, who had reached the semifinals of the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold last week at Lucknow, 21-12 21-13 in a lop-sided contest.
The reigning junior national champion from Almora will next take on former National champion Sourabh Verma, who knocked out defending champion and his younger brother Sameer 21-16 21-16 in just 23 minutes in another semifinal clash.
Sameer, seeded second, had defeated fifth seed Pratul Joshi 21-9 21-11, while Sourabh, third seed, had beaten Siril Varma 21-16 21-13 in quarterfinals to reach the semifinals earlier in the day.
In women’s singles, Reshma karthik, ninth seed, who had shocked top seed Tanvi Lad 22-20 21-13 in a 47-minute clash early in the day, thrashed Aakarshi Kashyap 21-10 21-12 to set up a summit clash with second seed Rituparna Das, who defeated former National Games gold medallist Arundhati Pantawane 21-11 21-10 in another match.
14th seed Arundhati had overcome a stiff resistance from Saili Rane 21-16 17-21 21-17 earlier in the day, while Rituparna had defeated 13th seed Rasika Raje 21-17 21-18.
In men’s doubles, Nanda Gopal and Sanyam Shukla defeated Krishna Prasad and Dhruv Kapila 21-10 21-12 and will face third seeds Satwik Sai Raj and Chirag Shetty, who beat Bennet Antony and Arjun Kumar Reddy 21-16 21-7.
In women’s doubles, third seeds Aparna Balan and Prajakta Sawant beat Mahima Aggarwal and K Maneesha 21-13 21-11. They will meet Shikha gautam and Sanyogita Ghorpade, who defeated Sruthi KP and haritha M H 21-14 21-16 in another match.
In mixed doubles, top seeds Satwik and Maneesha saw off seventh seeds Dhruv and Kuhoo Garg 21-18 21-13 to set up a clash with Gaurav Prasad Venket and Juhi Dewangan after the pair got a walkover from fourth seeds Akshay Dewalkar and Aparna.
