A super performance on court from golden boy Cherian
JUNIOR BADMINTON
SEVERAL of Northumberland’s young players spread their wings to play in a number of Badminton England age-group circuit events run by Cumbria and Tees Valley.
Pride of place goes to Melvin Cherian, who overcame a 28-strong field to win the boys’ singles at the Tees Valley Under-17 Tournament.
He took the gold medal with an excellent 21-19 victory over Yorkshire’s Thomas King.
This followed on from Cherian’s recent success, in partnership with his county colleague Arif Alam, in taking the level doubles title in the Cumbria Under-17 Tournament.
The scoreline was again 21-19, this time over Adam Ashraf (Lancashire) and Oliver Stapleton (Yorkshire) and came after Alam and Cherian had stormed through the group round, winning all their five matches in fine style.
In the singles competition in Penrith, they had both reached the semi-finals but suffered the same 21-16 losses.
At the under-15 event in the Cumbria tournament, Tim Bodani performed well to reach two finals.
He lost the singles final to number one seed Karthik Ajith of Lancashire. He then partnered Matthew Short, making it through to the boys’ doubles final but then came up against Ajith again, losing 21-17.
There was also further success for Ponteland’s Lucy Dodd.
She continued her great start to the season by taking the title in the Tees Valley Under-13 Tournament, beating Cheshire’s Anushka Acharya 22-20.