Thursday, July 7, 2011

Sameer Verma, P.V. Sindhu storm into semi-finals of Asian Youth badminton-2011

Earlier this week, China had comfortably won the Mixed team championships title at the Asian Youth championships (Badminton Asia Youth Under 19 Mixed Team events 2011) that was held at Lucknow in India. However the subsequent individual events are witnessing a closer competition between the players from the top 8 badminton playing countries of Asia.

For India, Sameer Verma and P.V. Sindhu have stormed into the semi-finals of the men's singles and women's singles events respectively at the Asian Youth 2011 badminton tourney.

Men's Singles results for India
In the men's quarterfinal match Sameer Verma defeated Guo Kai of China 21-19, 12-21, 21-15. In the semi-finals Sameer will be playing against Liu Kai also of China who defeated another promising Indian junior K.Srikanth 26-24, 21-17.  Liu has also defeated the top seed Ramadhan of Indonesia in the 3rd round of this tournament. In another men's singles quarter-final match Pratul Joshi of India lost to 2nd seeded Zulkiffli Zulfadli of Malaysia 15-21, 9-21.

Sameer has had an impressive showing at the Asian Youth tournament and had performed creditably well in the team events also, winning all the matches that he played in. India had finished as a losing semi-finalist at the team events.
Sameer's elder brother Sourabh Verma is also creating ripples on the senior international badminton circuit, and had an excellent outing at the India Open super series that was held at Delhi earlier this year.

Women's Singles Results for India
In the women's singles event, India's most promising junior player P.V. Sindhu reached the semi-finals defeating Zheng Yu of China 22-20, 11-21, 21-12 to set up a semi-final clash with Sun Yu of China. P.V.Sindhu is just 16 years of age, but she has already made a mark at the under-19 levels, and is already being hailed by many as the next Saina Nehwal of India. She trains at the Pullela Gopichand academy at Hyderabad where Saina also trains.

Doubles results for India
Though Sindhu reached the semi-finals of the women's singles which is her main focus area for the future, she could not repeat the same performance in the women's doubles as the Indian duo of Sindhu and K.Maneesha went down tamely to 2nd seeds Ou Dongni & Xiong Rui of China 8-21, 9-21.

In the mixed doubles event, India's last remaining hope, G. Ruthvika Shivani & B. Venkatesh lost against Pei Tianyi & Ou Dongni 11-21, 7-21.

All Indian eyes will now be focussed on Sameer Verma & Pusarla Venkat Sindhu's semi-final matches that will be held tomorrow.

.

No comments:

Post a Comment