India’s Kaushal Dharmamer and men’s doubles pairing of Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy reached their respective finals at the India International Challenge badminton tournament, being played at the Cricket Club of India courts in Mumbai, on Saturday.
Kaushal Dharmamer – who has won titles this year in Maldives and Myanmar — won the men’s singles semi-final against seventh seed Adulrach Namkul of Thailand in straight games. The Indian needed 47 minutes to win a hard-fought match 21-13, 22-20 against the Thai shuttler ranked 70 places above him.
Dharmamer will now face fifth seed Xiaodong Sheng from Canada in the final.
Earlier, the top-seeded Indian doubles pair defeated Thailand’s Supak Jomkoh and Pakin Kuna-Anuvit 21-17, 21-13 in 27 minutes in the semi-final.
Having dropped a game each in their first match and the quarter-final, Attri and Reddy were glad they had a comfortable outing on Saturday.
“We are in good form right now,” said Attri after the semi-final. “We won the Nepal International Challenge last week, where we defeated a couple of tough opponents. We are motivated and confident because we have been playing well since the past month or so.”
Jomkoh and Kuna-Anuvit had reached the last eight after grueling matches in their first two rounds. Attri said that he and Reddy knew they had the upper hand going into the contest.
“We had played them before and were confident coming into today’s match,” he said. “We were confident we would win easily.”
Attri and Reddy play another Thai pair in the final on Sunday – Chaloempon Charoenkitamorn and Kittisak Namdash. The two form the second-highest ranked men’s doubles team from their country and have dropped just one game in the competition so far.
“We are playing a strong pair [on Sunday],” said Attri. “We haven’t played them before so we will need to prepare well.”
There was heartbreak for Indian shuttlers earlier in the day, though. In the women’s singles semi-final, Aakarshi Kashyap lost 11-21, 10-21 to Porntip Buranaprasertsuk of Thailand.
The 18-year-old had not dropped a single game in her first three matches, but struggled to match with the top seed in the semi-final.
“I didn’t play a good match today,” said Kashyap. “I had been suffering from shin pain right through the tournament. That made it difficult to retrieve the shuttle, which is a strong part of my game. I could have beaten her if I wasn’t injured, all my energy went in focusing on the shin.”
In the first encounter of the day, India’s Maneesha K and Arjun MR lost their mixed doubles semi-final 12-21, 14-21 to second seeds Cheah Yee See and Hoo Pang Ron from Malaysia.