Jaiswal upsets defending champion Verma in second round

The 77^th Senior National badminton championship came to life on the first full day of competition when the unheralded Sreyansh Jaiswal of Chattisgarh upset top seed and defending champion Sourabh Verma in the men’s singles second round here on Sunday.

The 52 min encounter between a player who has now over two years of experience on the international circuit and the other who is still finding his feet in the domestic events was more a battle of nerves rather than attrition.

For the first 15 minutes, it looked like Verma will have a cakewalk against a junior player who himself “believed” that he had no chance of winning against such a senior opponent. That meant that Jaiswal used to match the top seed in the rallies only to miss out on opportunities to finish the point.

However, the 17-year-old trainee of former national coach S M Arif decided to enjoy himself on the court after the first game and that slowly but surely the pressure shifted from him to the experienced campaigner.

There were hardly any rallies or strokes that stood out but the one could feel the nerves in Verma’s approach at the net, which has always been the strong point of the boy from Dhar. His net dribbles lost the sharpness and his lifts could only reach mid court for the lanky Jaiswal to finish with ease.

Later speaking about the match, Verma admitted that he allowed the pressure to build on himself and made silly mistakes.

Even Jaiswal struggled with his nerves at the business end of the match and though one would give him the credit for raising his game to score five consecutive points to lead 18-13 in the decider. It would now be interesting to see how the youngster would handle the pressure of being the favourite when he takes on Nikhilesh Sharma of Assam.