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Badminton
By Rakesh Rao
Malaysia's Yeoh Kay Bin and Aparna Popat of India who won the men's and women's titles in the Asian Satellite badminton championship at Jaipur on Friday . — Photos: R.V. Moorthy
After the all-Malaysian men's singles title-clash saw second seed Yeoh Kay Bin upstage favourite Lee Chong Wei 15-5, 15-13. For the record, Aparna, ranked 24 in the world, won 11-4, 10-13, 11-4 in 44 minutes and gained 180 ranking points. Irrespective of the result, the women's final was far from a quality contest. With the high-speed shuttles forcing the players to check even their drives and drops, leave alone tosses, the winner had to be the one who exercised more control on this day. Eventually, it was Aparna who managed to keep the shuttle on the court more often than her rival. Salakjit, who has variety of soft strokes and mixes them up with deception, showed tremendous fighting qualities for the second successive day. After Aparna reached the threshold of victory by racing away with the first game and coming back from 1-7 to lead 10-8 in the second, Salakjit saved two match-points and reeled off five straight points to level the match. In the decider, Aparna was never in danger of losing. She led 7-2 and 10-4 but squandered two more match-points before catching her rival short on the forecourt with a backhand return. Apart from Salakjit, her compatriots lost in the women's doubles and mixed doubles finals, too. Earlier, the men's final provided limited excitement. Lee's all-attacking approach was not very effective today as he could not keep his errors in check. Again, besides the speedy shuttles, what made Lee more erratic was the injury he suffered on his two fingers of his playing hand, after a fall during the first game. He played the remainder of the match by strapping two fingers together and it was quite clear that he could not grip the racquet as well as he would have liked to. Unlike Lee, Yeoh was far more composed. He never looked in any great hurry to finish the points and played on his rival's patience, rather the lack of it. Yeoh won the first five and the last nine points of the opening game. In between, Lee made it 4-5 and 5-6 but could not get any closer. In the second game, Lee continued with his flashy ways but this time, he landed more shuttles in place and raced to a 6-1 lead. But Yeoh was not to be denied on this day. He rallied to make it 8-6 and again came back from 6-9 to reach match-point at 10. Lee's never-say-die spirit not only saw him save five match-points but also claw to 13-14. However, a netted backhand from Lee on the sixth match-point settled the contest.
The results: Men's singles (final): Yeoh Kay Bin (Mal) bt Lee Chong Wei (Mal) 15-5, 15-13. Women's singles (final): Aparna Popat (Ind) bt Salakjit Polsana (Tha) 11-4, 10-13, 11-4. Men's doubles (final): Mohammad Tazari and Abdul Latif (Mal) bt Lin Woon Fui and Hong Chieng Hun (Mal) 5-15, 15-9, 15-10. Women's doubles (final): Jiang Yanmei and Li Yujia (Sin) bt Duangnong Aroonkesorn and Kunchala Voravichitchaikul (Tha) 15-9, 15-11. Mixed doubles (final): Hendri Saputra and Li Yujia (Sin) bt Nuttaphon and Kunchala Voravichitchaikul (Tha) 15-4, 15-6; (semifinals): Saputra and Li bt Songphon Anugritayawon (Tha) 15-3, 15-4; Narkthong and Voravichitchaikul (Tha) bt Abdul Latif and See Phui Leng (Mal) 15-6, 9-15, 15-10.
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