Indian paddles clinch 15 medals at Jordan Junior and Cadet Open

India’s junior paddlers continued their purple patch on the international circuit, notching up 15 medals including two gold, three silver and ten bronze at the 2018 Jordan Junior and Cadet Open in Jordan.

Suhana Saini scored a comprehensive 3-1 win against Cyprus’ Foteini Meletie to bring home India’s first gold medal in the mini-cadet girl’s singles category.

The second gold came courtesy the cadet boy’s doubles pair of Deepit Patil and Dev Shroff as they defeated the much-fancied Taipei pair of Hsin-Yu Li and Guan-Ru Wang 3-2.

After a stellar run, Manush Shah settled for a silver in the junior boy’s singles category. He lost out to Chinese Taipei’s Hsin-Yang Li 2-4 in a close-fought final clash.

Manush couldn’t strike gold in the junior boy’s doubles either, he and his partner Jeet Chandra lost to the Iranian duo of Amirreza Abassi and Amin Ahmadian.

Rajveer Shah sparkled in the mini cadet boy’s singles before losing to Iran’s Navid Shams 1-3 in the finals.

After two Indian females made their way to the semi-finals of the junior girl’s category, a gold or silver seemed imminent. But both Prapti Sen and Selena Selvakumar were restricted to bronze medals by Sih-Han Fang and Ting-Ting Chen of Chinese Taipei.

It was the same story in the cadet girl’s singles, with Swastika Ghosh and Nithya Mani suffering against Chinese players in the semifinals to secure bronze medals.

Anukram Jain (junior boys singles), Surbhi PatwariPrapti Sen (junior girl’s doubles), Payas Jain-H Jeho (cadet boy’s doubles), Diya Chitale-Trisha Gogoi (cadet girl’s doubles) and Nithya Mani-Munmun Kundu (cadet girl’s doubles) were the others who picked up bronze medals.