Asian Junior Badminton Championship | Unnati Hooda and two others settle for silver medals, India finish with five overall
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In a decent showing by the Indian shuttlers at the Asia U-17 & U-15 Junior Badminton Championship, they returned with five medals in all, including three silvers on the final day. On Sunday, Unnati Hooda, Anish Thoppani, and the duo of Arsh Mohammad/Sanskar Saraswat clinched the silver medal.
Prior to this on Saturday, Tankara Talasila of the U-15 Men's Singles and pair Bjorn Jaison/Aathish Sreenivas of the U-15 Men's Doubles won a bronze medal each in their respective events. But this time around, the returns were not as good as the last time. In the previous edition, India had six gold medals, courtesy of Siril Verma (Men's Singles), Samiya Farooqui (Women's Singles), Tasnim Mir (Women's Singles), Meghana Reddy/Tasnim Mir (Women's Doubles) in the U-15 category, while MR Arjun/Chirag Shetty (Men's Doubles) and Krishna Prasad/Satwiksairaj Rankireddy (Men's Doubles) in the U-17 category.
In the first match of the day on Sunday, Thoppani made an incredible comeback by winning the second game 24-22, after losing the first. But Chinese Taipei's Chung-Hsiang Yih showed his class to win 21-19 in the third and clinch the title. Something similar happened in the second match of the day too, where Arsh/Sanskar who lost the first set and then won the second to level things out. Later they lost out in the third game, to lose out on the title.
Here, the Taipei team of Lai Po Yu/Yi-Hao Lin won the gold medal after trouncing the Indians. In the last match of the day, India's biggest hope, Unnati Hooda was in action, and played a solid match. After losing the first game, she won the second in style with 21-9. But an argument with home favourite Sarunrak Vitidsarn shifted her focus as she lost the match eventually.
