The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Budding talents to slug it out at junior meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 04, 2006

Sport

Sport - Badminton

Budding talents to slug it out at junior meet

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: With every passing year, the National junior-ranking badminton tournament is getting bigger and better.

This year's edition sponsored by the Union Bank of India (from Sept. 4 to 8) has an enhanced prizemoney of Rs. 2 lakh, double of what was offered last year. The championship has more events, with the inclusion of U-10 and U-13 age categories, besides the U-16 and U-19 events.

The turnout too is huge with 1,100 entries in 16 events, making it one of the biggest junior and sub-junior championship in the country. All the top junior players including Jishnu Sanyal, Akshay Dewalkar and Ajay Jayaram and Aditi Mutatkar will be see seen in action.

The tournament will be the yardstick for selecting players for the World junior championship, to be at Incheon, South Korea in November.

V. Sudhakar of AP will be the chief referee and U. Vimal Kumar will be the director of the tournament, which will be managed by the Padukone Sports Management under the auspices of the KBA and BAI.

The qualifying rounds will be held on Monday and Tuesday in the U-13, U-16 and U-19 sections. Eight qualifiers in the singles and four in the doubles section will be spotted for the main draw, which gets underway on Sept. 6.

The top seeds:

Boys: U-19: Jishnu Sanyal (A-I), U-16: Abhimanyu Singh (MP), U-13: V.S. Vijetha (AP), U-10: Talar. Girls: U-19: Neha Pandit (Mah), U-16: Daya Elsa Jacob (Ker), U-13: Sikky Reddy (AP), U-10: Vaishnavi Iyer (Mah).