Dani, Joshi steal the march in Hyderabad

Harsheel Dani and Aditya Joshi underlined their status as the upcoming talent in Indian badminton when the two 16-year-olds shared the spoils in the All India junior ranking badminton tournament in Hyderabad on Monday.

Dani and Joshi, who were doubles partners till last year and now have decided to concentrate solely on singles, faced each other in both the under-17 and under-19 finals and ended up with an even head-to-head record for the day.

Joshi was the first to get off the blocks as he clinched the under-17 title with a 21-18, 21-19 victory in the morning session. However, Dani wasn’t ready to go home empty handed and fought back from a game down to win the under-19 final 19-21, 21-18, 21-15 in one hour and 10 minutes.

Dani, who trains at the Uday Pawar Badminton Academy in Mumbai, and Prakash Padukone Academy trainee Joshi have been dominating the sub junior circuit for the last two years and it was time they made their presence count in the junior circuit.

In the quarterfinals, Joshi got the better of top seed C Rohit Yadav in a marathon battle while Dani upset Aditya’s elder brother and second seed Pratul Joshi in the semifinals to set up a summit clash in the under-19 category.

In the girl’s category, Asian junior champion P V Sindhu had little trouble in packing off Aarthi Sara Sunil 21-10, 21-5 while Karnataka’s Reshma Karthik defeated Rituparna Das 21-14, 21-11 to bag the under-17 title.

Results:

U-19

Boy’s singles: 8-Harsheel Dani bt 5-Aditya Joshi 19-21, 21-19, 21-15

Boy’s doubles: 1-G Gopi Raju/T Hemanagendra Babu bt Sanyam Shukla/V Gangadhara Rao 26-24, 21-18

Girl’s singles: P V Sindhu bt 1-Aarthi Sara Sunil 21-10, 21-5

Girl’s doubles: 2-G Ruthvika Shivani/Poorvisha S Ram bt 4-J Meghana/K Maneesha 19-21, 21-11, 21-18

Mixed Doubles: 1-B Venkatesh/G Ruthvika Shivani bt 3-G Gopi Raju/K Maneesha 21-17, 21-16

U-17

Boy’s singles: 2-Aditya Joshi bt 1-Harsheel Dani 21-18, 21-19

Boy’s doubles: 4-MR Arjun/Chirag Shetty bt 8-Chirag Sen/Saurabh Sharma 15-21, 21-13, 24-22

Girl’s singles: 1-Reshma Karthik bt 4-Rituparna Das 21-14, 21-11

Girl's Doubles: Reshma Karthik/Sanjana Santosh bt 2-D Sudha Kalyani/M Archana 21-17, 21-17

Kashyap becomes first Indian men's singles player to reach quarters

P Kashyap wasn’t at his best against Sri Lanka’s Niluka Karunaratne but India’s top singles player did enough to become the first Indian man to qualify for the quarterfinals of the Olympic Games.

The world number 21, who topped Group D, got the better of Karunaratne 21-14, 15-21, 21-9 in the pre-quarterfinals at the Wembley Arena. He will now face the winner of the match between world number one Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia and Simon Santoso of Indonesia.

Before Kashyap, the best Indian performance in the Olympic Games was a pre-quarterfinal appearance by Dipankar Bhattacharya in the 1992 Barcelona Games.