India’s Gayatri Gopichand suffered defeats in both the girls’ singles categories at the Badminton Asia U-17 and U-15 Junior Championships 2017 in Yangon, Myanmar that started on Wednesday.
The 15-year-old, who is the daughter of Pullela Gopichand, was stretched to three games in both her opening round matches. In the U-17 category, she lost to Indonesia’s Yasnita Enggira Setiawan 22-20 18-21 21-13 in a match that went on for 60 minutes. In the earlier match, in the U-15 category where she is ranked No. 11 in Asia, Gayatri lost to the top-ranked Stephani Widjaja from Indonesia 24-22, 14-21, 21-15.
India’s Samiya Imad Farooqui also met with defeat in the Under-17 girls’ singles category against Malaysia’s Nur Syaza Rashidi 21-9, 21-19.
Among the winners for India on day one were Maisnam Meiraba, who won his first round in the U17 category 21-10 21-13 against Malaysia’s Shun Yang Lee. Amit Rathore and Sathish Kumar Karunakaran also won their first round matches in the boy’s singles in the same category while Aashi Rawat and Sneha Rajwar won in the girls’ singles U15 category. Siddhant Gupta, Punshiba Yengkhom and Ayush Raj Gupta won their opening matches in the boys U15 category.
Good news in doubles
Ayush Raj Gupta and Shubham Patel, Jayant Rana and Arshad Shaik, Sanjeev Rao Relly and Khajamoinuddin Shaik started with wins in the boys’ doubles U15 category. Kriti Bharadwaj and Tanya Hemanth won their first match in the U15 girls’ doubles.
The Badminton Association of India had sent a 41-member contingent for the Asia Junior Championships but there were no mixed doubles participants.