BWF World Junior Championships 2022 badminton: Unnati Hooda, Anupama Upadhyaya through to round of 32
Both the Indian badminton players were stretched to three games by their respective opponents but eventually came out on top.
Indian badminton players Anupama Upadhyaya and Unnati Hooda progressed to the women’s singles round of 32 at the World Junior Badminton Championships 2022 with hard-fought wins in Santander, Spain on Tuesday.
Anupama Upadhyay, the world No. 3 in the junior badminton rankings and top seed at the junior championships, beat Singapore’s Yi Ting Elsa Lai 19-21, 21-10, 21-9 in her round of 64 clash.
World junior No. 5 Unnati Hooda, also the fifth seed, meanwhile, eased out Sri Lanka’s Ranithma Liyanage 21-11, 19-21, 21-7.
Both Anupama Upadhyaya and Unnati Hooda had received first round byes.
Rakshita Sree Ramraj also made it through with a 21-16, 21-12 win over 16th seed Lucie Krulová of the Czech Republic.
S Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian, the highest-ranked Indian men’s singles player at world No. 4, also got his campaign up and running with a win after downing Singapore shuttler Remus NG in the round of 64.
India’s Bharat Raghav, who beat England’s Michael Pang in the round of 128 on Monday, however, succumbed to a 21-14, 21-15 loss to French top seed Alex Lanier in his second round match. Ayush Shetty also bowed out after losing to Singapore’s Lau Jun Hui Marcus 22-20, 15-21, 18-21.
The mixed doubles pair of Samarveer and Radhika Sharma, however, continued their impressive form from the BWF World Junior Mixed Team Championships 2022 earlier this month. The Indian pair pulled off a surprise come-from-behind 18-21, 21-19, 21-17 win over German pair Jonathan Dresp and Anna Mejikovskiy, the 10th seeds at the meet.
Shreya Balaji and Srinidhi Narayanan were the only other Indian doubles team to make it through on the day as they beat Amber Boonen and Tammi Van Wonterghem 21-13, 21-8.
Isharani Baruah and Devika Sihag crashed out from women’s doubles while the men’s doubles pairs of Arsh Mohammad and Abhinav Thakur and Nicholas Raj and Tushar Suveer also bowed out.
Former world No. 1 Saina Nehwal is the only Indian to win the junior world championship crown to 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.