Badminton: Maisnam Meiraba, Malvika Bansod to lead India’s challenge at Asian Junior C’ships

Maisnam Meiraba Luwang and Malvika Bansod will spearhead India’s challenge as the Badminton Association of India announced a 23-member squad that is set to participate at the Asian Junior Championship in Suzhou, China from July 20-28.

The boys’ singles challenge will be led by Manipur’s Maisnam, who has amassed an impressive total of 1000 points, by virtue of a fine run in the domestic circuit winning consecutive four domestic junior titles as well as both the selection tournaments.

The girls’ team will be spearheaded by Airport Authority of India’s Malvika Bansod, who topped the list with 1000 points.

While Meiraba topped the chart in the boys’ singles section, the others joining him will be the Tamil Nadu trio of Sathish Kumar, Sidhant Gupta and Sankar Muthuswamy.

In girls’ singles, Bansod will be joined by Delhi’s Ashi Rawat, Unnati Bisht of Uttarakhand and the 2017 U-15 Asian Junior Championships gold medallist Samiya Imad Farooqui from Telengana.

Ishaan Bhatnagar and Vishnuvardhan Goud will be leading India’s challenge in the boys’ doubles section. Aditi Bhatt and Tanisha Crasto will be the ones to watch in girls’ doubles as they topped the points table with 926 points while the in-form pair of K Dingku Sing and Ritika Thakkar will be India’s main stay in the mixed doubles.

At the previous edition held in Indonesia, India won gold after 54 years, courtesy Lakshya Sen who won the boys’ singles title.

The coaching team will be headed by Junior National Coach, Sanjay Mishra and former India players Chetan Anand and Arun Vishnu among others as coaches.

The Indian team will be undergoing a camp for fifteen days starting July 3 in Panchkula, Haryana.

BAI has considered the cumulative ranking points from the two All India Junior Ranking tournaments held in Chennai and Trivandrum in the month of May while selecting the squad. While considering the player’s selection, each of the leg winners gets 500 while the runner-up bags 425. The rest of the points bifurcation are: semi-finals (350), quarter-finals (275) and pre-quarter-finals (192).