On Thursday, Kartik Jindal of CAG and created one of the biggest surprises in the men’s third round of the 85th Senior National badminton championships here.
Kartik’s excellent defence allowed him to defeat M. Raghu, the sixth seed, 13-21, 21-18, 21-16 and go to the round of 16. Other notable players, including Lakshya Sen, Kiran George, M. Tharun, and M. Mithun, advanced to the pre-quarterfinals.
Earlier, in the men’s second round, third seed Siddhanth Gupta of Tamil Nadu was defeated by Aditya Joshi of Petroleum 11-21, 21-14, 15-21. However, Aditya was unable to advance as he was defeated in the third round by Rounak Chouhan of Chhattisgarh 9-21, 21-17, 15-21. Railways’ Chirag Sen defeated AAI’s Kartikey Gulshan Kumar 7-21, 21-19, 23-21 in the final.
Raghu and Kartik battled tooth and nail in their bout. Raghu, a natural aggressor, became exhausted near the conclusion of the third, but kept going. Kartik, on the other hand, recovered practically everything thrown at him. Despite trailing 10-20 in the third game, Raghu saved six match chances before hitting one into the net while attempting to accept a forehand drop from Kartik. In reality, this is Kartik’s first victory over Raghu in four matches.
So far, four men’s singles players have pulled out of the competition owing to injuries: K. Sathish Kumar, S. Sankar Muthusamy (both Tamil Nadu), Ayush Shetty (Karnataka), and Saurav Kapoor (RBI).
Featured Image: The Bridge