The Hindu : Sport / Badminton : Utsav stars for AI; Dhanya helps Railways

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 28, 2007
ePaper

Sport

Sport - Badminton

Utsav stars for AI; Dhanya helps Railways

NEW DELHI: Utsav Mishra emerged as the star of the day helping Air-India pull off an exciting 3-2 victory over archrival Railways in the men’s final of the Central Zone badminton championship at the AIIMS badminton hall here on Thursday.

Earlier, Dhanya Nair guided Railways to a 2-0 victory over Air-India in the women’s final. The winning teams qualified for the National inter-State championship. It turned out to be a two-team race after the third team, Universities, was disqualified for not keeping its commitment to host the event. In the best match of the men’s tie, seasoned campaigner Sachin Ratti reproduced some of his old magic to tame National finalist Anand Pawar after losing the first game. The match was marred by the failure of the overhead halogen lights in the first two games.

After winning the first game, Pawar’s over-reliance on speed proved his undoing as Ratti managed to rattle the youngster and forced errors on the big points. After Railways rallied to take a 2-1 lead, it was Mishra all the way. He levelled the scores easily dismissing Rajiv Bajaj. He returned to the court in the company of Pawar to brush aside a tired Ratti and Hemant Duggal for a deserving victory for Air-India.

Railways had the consolation of dethroning Air-India in the women’s section. Dhanya Nair won her singles against her citymate from Pune, Sayali Gokhale, and completed the triumph in the company of Anita Ohlan in a tight three-game thriller.

The results: Men: Air-India beat Railways 3-2 (Jishnu Sanyal bt Arup Baidya 21-14, 21-23, 21-18; Anand Pawar lost to Sachin Ratti 21-12, 10-21, 17-21; Jishnu Sanyal & Akshay Dewalkar lost to Jayan James & T. Dinesh 16-21, 21-19, 22-20; Utsav Mishra bt Rajiv Bajaj 21-15, 21-15; Anand Pawar & Utsav Mishra bt Sachin Ratti & Hemant Duggal 21-13, 21-17).

Women: Railways beat Air-India 2-0 (Dhanya Nair bt Sayali Gokhale 21-19, 21-17; Dhanya Nair & Anita Ohlan bt Sayali Gokhale & Neha Pandit 15-21, 21-14, 21-19).

Roko on song

Z. Roko slammed four goals as Government Senior Secondary School, Lapathy, Car Nicobar defeated Government Higher Secondary School, Kohima, in a league match of the Subroto Cup junior football tournament at the Ambedkar Stadium in New Delhi on Thursday. Petevitue (2) and Hukavi scored the other goals for the Lapathy team.

In another match, NLC Boys Higher Secondary School, Neyveli, beat Padiachecera School, Kumarghat, Tripura, 4-2. R. Sathish (2), D. Ganesh and L. Charles were successful in finding the target for the Neyveli team. L. Darwing and Mithun Raaga scored the goals for the Tripura team. Winllington (2) and Kalyan scored the goals in taking SGVP International School, Ahmedabad, to a 3-0 triumph over BKSP School, Dhaka.

Agilent Cup

The second Agilent Cup will be held at the DDA Siri Fort Sports Complex, New Delhi, from October 5 to 7. Teams from 16 corporate houses will participate in the championships which will be held in a league format across four racquet sport disciplines — tennis, badminton, squash and TT.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail