Kareena, Viplav bag badminton titles
Kareena Madan prevailed over Samiaa Shah to win the women’s singles crown in the CCI-Greater Mumbai District Badminton Championship, jointly organized by the Cricket Club of India (CCI) and the Greater Mumbai Badminton Association (GBMA).
In the final, second-seeded Kareena shrugged off the initial hesitancy in her play before lifting the level of her game to sideline unseeded Samiaa, winning at 21-15, 21-6, at the CCI Badminton courts.
Meanwhile, Viplav Kuvale had a very successful day winning three titles.
The second seed Viplav produced a solid fighting performance to score a deserving victory against top seed Nigel D’Sa in the men’s singles final.
Viplav showed great character and determination and combined with excellent court coverage he coolly retrieve every smash or picked up the disguised drop shots from Nigel, who tried his best to wrest the advantage.
Viplav’s soild defence blunted Nigel’s power play and after leading from the start went onto to take the first game.
However, in the second Viplav seemed to have lost concentration and focus, which allowed Nigel to dominate play and to comfortably win the second to level scores at 1-all and take the clash to the deciding third game.
In the decider, both Nigel and Viplav slugged it out as the scores ran close till 15-all. Nigel managed to nose ahead at 17-15 and 18-16 and appeared set to pull through, but he made two errors which Viplav capitalized on to draw level at 18-all.
He then went on to win the next three points to complete a satisfying 21-14, 9-21, 21-18 victory.
The top-seeded pairing of Akshaya Warang and Viplav Kuvale combined perfectly to easily defeat the unseeded duo of Angha Karandikar and Siddhesh Raut 21-15, 2112 in the mixed doubles final.