Shuttlers continue good run in Russia
Former national champions Sourabh Verma and Rituparna Das continued their impressive run as they progressed to the quarter-finals of the $75,000 Russia Open BWF Tour Super 100 tournament here on Thursday.
Also making it to the final eight were Mithun Manjunath, Subhankar Dey and Vrushali Gummadi in singles, while the men’s doubles pair of Arun George and Sanyam Shukla and the two mixed doubles combination of Rohan Kapoor and Kuhoo Garg and Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh also entered the quarter-finals.
Coming back after recovering from an injury, Sourabh, who made the cut for the Asian Games after proving his worth at the selection tournaments, trounced Russia’s Sergey Sirant 21-11, 21-9. The eighth-seeded Indian will face Israel’s Misha Zilberman, seeded third.
Rituparna had to dig deep into her reservoir to eke out a 13-21, 21-17, 21-19 win over second seed Ying Ying Lee of Malaysia.
The 21-year-old from Haldia will square off against American qualifier Iris Wang next.
Mithun, who had won the men’s singles title at the All India Senior Ranking Badminton tournament in Bangalore, defeated Japan’s Koji Naito 21-16, 21-13 to set up a meeting with Malaysia’s Satheishtharan Ramachandran on Friday.
INDIA U-16 WIN
The India U-16 team ended its exposure tour on a winning note as they notched up a 2-1 win over Malaysia U-16 in the second International friendly in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. After two first-half goals from Rohit Danu (21st min) and Givson Singh (31st min) had provided India an early edge, Malaysia managed to pull one back in added time of the second half.
The battle was mostly fought in the middle before Danu was brought down by the Malaysian defender. The referee didn’t hesitate to award a penalty kick in favour of the visitors, which Danu converted.
NEHA IN CONTENTION
Neha Tripathi put herself in contention yet again with a fine one-under 71 in the second round of the 10th Leg of the Hero Women’s Pro Golf Tour here today.
Meanwhile, Vani Kapoor rebounded from her modest first round showing with the week’s best card of three-under 69 to move to Tied-2nd alongside Amandeep Drall (71-71) at Clover Greens here.
Neha is now three-under 141 and holds a one-shot lead over Vani and Amandeep. Vani is playing only her third event on the Hero WPGT this season.
One shot behind them at oneunder 143 is Gaurika Bishnoi (73-70). The scores this week have been consistently good with even the fifth placed Tvesa Malik (70-74) at even par.