Rituparna, Joshi bag junior national singles title

U-19 national champions
Aditya Joshi and Rituparna Das

 Rituparna Das ended G Ruthvika Shivani’s hopes of a second consecutive double crown with a straight games hammering in the u-19 girls singles final while second seed Aditya Joshi of Air India ended the Houdini act of Kerala’s Arun George to lift the u-19 boys title in the 38^th Junior National Badminton tournament here on Thursday.

The Kolkata girl, who now plays for Andhra Pradesh after shifting base to Hyderabad, proved too good for the defending champion to win 21-14, 21-7 to add the u-19 national title to the u-13 and u-17 national crowns she had won in the past and completed a double crown herself by also bagging the girls doubles title with J Meghana.

U-19 boys doubles champions
MR Arjun and Chirag Shetty with
BAI vice president TPS Puri and
coach Sanjeev Sachdeva

The encounter between the country’s two topmost juniors was expected to go down the wire but Rituparna never allowed her opponent to get a foot-hold in the match. She was deceptive at the net and came up with some timely drops to tackle the reach of the lanky Khamman girl, who had earlier got the better of Maharashtra’s Karishma Wadkar in the u-17 final.

Karishma, playing in her maiden national final, managed to push the defending champion in the first game but a few unforced errors at the crucial moment cost her dearly.

In the boy’s u-19 final, Arun who had staged improbable comebacks in the pre-quarterfinals and the semifinals began on the positive note but once Joshi got his rhythm going it was a one-way traffic.

The boy from Madhya Pradesh, who trains at the Prakash Padukone academy in Bangalore, kept Arun away from the net and used his big smash to good effect to kill the rallies and pocket the match 18-21, 21-12, 21-14 in 48 minutes.

In the u-17 boys singles final S Daniel Farid ended the dream run of B R Sankeerth 21-11, 21-14.

Results (finals):

BS U17

Daniel Farid S. (1), KTK, beat Sankeerth B. R. (9), KTK, 21-11, 21-14

GS U17

Ruthvika Shivani G. (2), AP, beat Karishma Wadkar (1), MAH, 21-19, 21-14

BS U19

Aditya Joshi (2), AI beat Arun George (3), KER, 18-21, 21-12, 21-14

GS U19

Rituparna Das (1), AP, beat Ruthvika Shivani G. (3), AP 21-14, 21-7

BD U17

Rohan Kapoor, DLI and Sourabh Sharma, HAR, beat Kapil Chaudhry and Chandrabhushan Tripathi,(3), UP, 21-10, 21-16

GD U-17

Mahima Aggarwal and Shikha Gautam, (3), KAR, beat Malvika JK and Ashna Roy, (1), KER 21-17, 21-11

BD U19

Arjun M. R., KER, and Chirag Shetty (5), MAH, beat Shlok Ramchandran and Sanyam Shukla (1), AI, 21-12, 19-21, 22-20

GD U19

Rituparna Das and Meghana J.  (3), AP, beat Vaishnavi Iyer, MAH, and Reshma Karthik (4), AI, 17-21, 21-9, 21-12

XD U19

Sanyam Shukla, AI, and Meghana J. (1), AP, beat Sankeerth B. R. and Mira Mahadevan, KTK, 21-11, 22-24, 21-7