Bhagat wins, young Kohli endure tough day at Paralympics

LUCKNOW: It wasn’t a good start to Indian para-badminton campaign at the Tokyo Paralympics on Wednesday as they lost opening group matches in both women’s singles and mixed doubles in contrasting manners at the Yogoi National Stadium.

The only face saving win on Day One of the badminton event, which made its debut at the Paralympics, for them was the first round win by World no 1 Pramod Bhagat against compatriot Manoj Sarkar in a thriller 21-10, 21-23, 21-9 in SL3 category.

In SL3-SU5 mixed doubles, Bhagat and Kohli lost to Lucas Mazur and Faustine Noel of France 9-21, 21-15, 19-21, whereas Kohli found the going tough against top seed Ayako Suzuki of Japan 4-21, 7-21 in just 19 minutes on the centre court in SU5 category.

Punjab’s girl Kohli never looked comfortable against former world champion Suzuki, who kept tossing the shuttle up for her inexperienced rival to see her hitting outside the sideline. From 2-all to 13-2 happened in quick time before Japanese pocketed the game at 21-4 at ease. Coach Gaurav Khanna’s repeated advises to Kohli to keep the shuttle within the court made no difference even in the second game and the 19-year-old Indian kept hitting the shuttle within the comfort zone of Suzuki, who was perfect in her drops as well as in court coverage. Interestingly, Kohli never managed to win points in a row in the match.

The Japanese stretched her lead to 5-2 and raced to 11-3 at the break. Kohli could impress just once when she came up with a cross-court smash at 5-14, but nothing happened thereafter as left-hander Suzuki raced to 21-7 only to see her opponent shaking her head in frustration.

In mixed doubles, Bhagat and Kohli started off well, taking a 2-1 lead in the first game, but thereafter the French duo showed well to take the game 21-9 in just 11 minutes.

But after a change in the court, Bhagat and Kohli managed to surprise Mazur and Noel with some fine touch to shuttle at the net to take the second game at 21-15, drawing parity.

The decider started with Mazur and Noel racing to an 8-5 lead, but the Indians levelled at 9-9 before being 9-11 down at the mid-game break. The French duo extended the lead to 14-9 after the break, before Bhagat and Kohli bounced back strongly, winning six points on a trot to take a 15-14 lead then.

Just when it looked like the Indians would wrap this up, Mazur and Noel came up with some stunning display of racquet game to pocket the decider 21-19 in 19 minutes. With this loss, the pressure is now on the Indian pair to win their next encounter if they are to advance to the semifinals.

Certainly, it was a blockbuster between Bhagat and Sarkar later in the day. Well-known to each others’ style of play, Bhagat easily pocketed the first game with a good margin of 11 points, but in the second he found Sarkar a tough nut to crack.

Sarkar, who has been a threetime world champion showed his might in style to take up the game at 23-21, forcing for a decider. And in decider, a dazzling Bhagat didn’t allow the shuttler from Uttrakhand to repeat his form and won the game and match comfortable at 21-9.