BWF World Junior Championships 2022 | Unnati Hooda and Anupama Upadhyay advance to the round of 32
Anupama Upadhyay and Unnati Hooda advanced to the women's singles round of 32 at the World Junior Badminton Championships 2022 on Tuesday. The top seed in the junior championships and third-ranked junior player in the world, Anupama Upadhyay, defeated Singapore's Yi Ting Elsa in the round of 64.
Ranithma Liyanage of Sri Lanka was defeated by world junior No. 5 and fifth seed Unnati Hooda 21-11, 19-21, 21-7. Anupama Upadhyay and Unnati Hooda both won byes in the first round. Rakshita Sree Ramraj also advanced after defeating Czech Republic's Lucie Krulová, the 16th seed, 21-16, 21-12.
The highest-ranked male singles player from India, S Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian, who is rated No. 4 in the world, also began his tournament with a victory after defeating Singaporean shuttler Remus NG in the round of 64.
However, Bharat Raghav of India lost to French top seed Alex Lanier in his second-round encounter after defeating England's Michael Pang in the round of 128 on Monday. Ayush Shetty also retired after falling to Lau Jun Hui Marcus of Singapore 22-20, 15-21, and 18-21.
But Samarveer and Radhika Sharma, who play in the mixed doubles, kept up their remarkable form from the BWF World Junior Mixed Team Championships 2022 earlier this month. The German duo Jonathan Dresp and Anna Mejikovskiy, the 10th seeds in the competition, were defeated by the Indian pair in an unexpected comeback victory of 18-21, 21-19, and 21-17.
Only one other Indian doubles combination to advance on the day was Shreya Balaji and Srinidhi Narayanan, who defeated Amber Boonen and Tammi Van Wonterghem 21-13, 21-8.
The men's doubles teams of Nicholas Raj and Tushar Suveer and Arsh Mohammad and Abhinav Thakur as well as Isharani Baruah and Devika Sihag were both eliminated.
Saina Nehwal, a former world No. 1, is the only Indian to have won the junior world championship title to date, while emerging talent Lakshya Sen earned India's last medal at the competition with a bronze in 2018. COVID-19 prevented the BWF World Junior Championships from taking place in 2020 and 2021. October 30 marks the end of the junior championships.
