Senior Nationals: Defending champions Chirag, Anmol advance with ease

BENGALURU: Former champions Mithun Manjunath and Sourabh Varma banked on their experience to pack off their much younger opponents while holders Chirag Sen and Anmol Kharb had an easy outing in the second round of the 86th Senior Nationals Badminton tournament here on Saturday.

Mithun defeated third seed Bharat Raghav 21-9, 21-18 before Varma got the better of Abhinav Garg 21-17, 21-17 in the men’s singles second round matches. Defending champion Chirag Sen also started his campaign in style with a 21-15, 21-15 win over Jeet Patel.

In women’s singles, Anmol hammered Deepali Gupta 21-8, 21-6 to make her intentions clear, last edition’s losing finalist Tanvi Sharma also eased into the third round with a 21-8, 21-6 win over Flora Engineer.

While the favourites put their best foot forward, there were a few upsets that underlined the depth of talent in Indian badminton.

In women’s singles, Rujula Ramu upset 10th seed Surya Charishma Tamiri 21-19, 19-21, 21-17 while Jiya Rawat came from a game behind to beat 9th seed Shruti Mundada 25-27, 21-14, 21-10.

In the men’s singles section, Rohan Gurbani proved too good for 11th seed K Lokesh Reddy, winning 21-15, 21-1 while Raghu M defeated 15th Karthik Jindal 21-19, 21-16.

It was a victory of experience over youth in women’s doubles with Kanika Kanwal and Bharti Pal teaming together to upset sixth seeds Amrutha P and Radhika Sharma 25-23, 21-17.