Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) retained both men’s and women’s titles in the 63rd Inter-state Inter-zonal badminton championship here on Tuesday.

PSPB’s men and women’s teams beat Air India and Railways respectively at Indoor Stadium at Campal to win the championship for the eight successive year.

In the men’s section for the Rahimtoola Cup, PSPB got a bright start when Anup Sridhar overcame a stiff challenge to beat Air India’s Utsav Mishra 21-19, 21-18 in the first singles final.

Air India’s Anand Pawar put up a brave fight in the next singles match against PSPB’s Chetan Anand and won the first set 22-20.

Anand, however, came back strongly to win the next set 21-16. In the decider, both fought neck-and-neck before Pawar lost steam and concentration to go down 21-23 to give PSPB a 2-1 lead.

Rupesh Kumar and V Diju of PSPB, who were trailing in both the sets against Air India’s Jishnu Sanyal and Akshay Dewalkar, kept their cool and forced their rivals to make errors at crucial moments to win the doubles 21-19, 21-19 to guide PSPB to a 3-0 victory.

Sridhar top-seeded
PSPB’s Anup Sridhar and Saina Nehwal were top-seeded in the men’s and women’s singles respectively for the 72nd Senior National Badminton championship, that will commence from Wednesday.