Chennai: Top seed P Gayatri Gopichand exited the Yonex-Sunrise All India Junior Ranking Badminton Tournament, losing squarely to No. 16 Aashi Rawat from Delhi in a dramatic semifinal here Saturday.
Tamilnadu too suffered a big setback with No. 4 seed Satish Kumar crumbling against the No. 2 seed from Manipur, Maisnam Meiraba. Gayatri, daughter of India coach Pullela Gopichand, was error-prone against a worthy challenger in Aashi. She edged into the lead but saw Aashi recover ground at 6-6.
The momentum shifted at that stage with Aashi jumping ahead at 10-9 and then 13-11. Gayatri continued to commit mistakes which Aashi exploited to the hilt, taking a strong 18-14 lead that proved to be good enough for a 21-15 victory.
In the second game, Aashi was on a roll, jumping to a 5-1 lead before she streaked ahead 9-2 and 15-7. She didn’t concede a single point after that for a well-deserved place in the final. Aashi now awaits the winner of the second semifinal between Tamilnadu’s Akshaya Arumugam and Samiya Imad Farooqui (Telangana), both unseeded.
Local lad Satish Kumar too found himself out of depth against No. 2 seed Meiraba, losing 13-21, 11-21 in 50 minutes. He fell behind early in both the games and failed to come up with any strategy to regain a toehold in the contest. He yielded an early 2-6 lead in the first game which became 4-8 and 9-16 pretty quickly.
The second game too followed the same pattern. Satish went down 2-5 and couldn’t recover any ground to lose 11-21 in 50 minutes. Satish, however, gave a glimpse of his talent and temperament in the morning, getting the better of No. 9 seed Sarath D of Andhra Pradesh. He was trailing after the first game (10-21) but he recovered enough to make it look like an easy win, taking the next two games 21-16, 21-12 .
RESULTS
Under-19 Boys Singles (Semifinals): Maisnam Meiraba (2, MNP) bt Sathish Kumar K. (4, TN) 21-13, 21-11; Aakash Yadav (5, DLI) bt Bidyasagar Salam (14, MNP) 21-16, 21-15.
GS U19 (Semifinals): Gayatri Gopichand Pullela (1, TS) lost to Aashi Rawat (16, DLI) 16-21, 10-21; Akshaya Arumugam (TN) lost to Samiya Imad Farooqui (TS) 16-21, 13-21.