BWF World Junior Championships 2022 badminton: Indian players impress on opening day
India’s Bharat Raghav, Ayush Shetty, Samarveer/Radhika Sharma and Rakshita Sree Ramraj won their opening round matches.
Indian badminton players Bharat Raghav, Ayush Shetty, Rakshita Sree Ramraj and the pair of Samarveer and Radhika Sharma advanced to the next round of the World Junior Badminton Championships 2022 in Santander, Spain on Monday.
The mixed doubles pair of Vignesh Thathineni and Srinidhi Narayanan, meanwhile, were eliminated. They won the first game but ended up losing 21-15, 12-21, 10-21 to South Korea’s Song Hyun Cho and Ye Ri Kim in the round of 128.
All players were part of the Indian team at the BWF World Junior Mixed Team Championships 2022, where India finished 13th.
Bharat Raghav was India’s first victor of the day as he beat England’s Michael Pang 21-17, 21-12 in the men’s singles first round.
Samarveer and Radhika Sharma fell behind but scripted a comeback to beat Danish pair Jonathan Melgaard and Maria Tommerup 10-21, 21-17, 21-19 in their mixed doubles opener.
Ayush Shetty won 21-9, 21-7 against Armenia’s Manvel Harutyunyan in the men’s singles and Rakshita Sree Ramraj beat Varangana Jayawardana of Sri Lanka 21-14, 21-12 in the women’s singles.
Top seed Anupama Upadhyay and 14-year-old Unnati Hooda, India’s brightest medal prospects at the meet, received byes in the opening round.
Former world No. 1 Saina Nehwal is the only Indian to win the junior world championship crown till date while rising star Lakshya Sen was India’s last medallist at the event with a bronze in 2018.
The BWF World Junior Championships were not held in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19.
The junior championships conclude on October 30.