Resilient Farid to clash with Laa in summit round

Karishma enters under-17 girls' final

Top seed Daniel S Farid overcame a mid-match wobble to storm into the boys’ under-17 final in the 12th Union Bank All-India Junior-ranking badminton tournament here on Friday

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The Karnataka teenager, who was coasting at one stage after running away with the opening set before being stung by Ansal Yadav counter-attack in the second, recovered well in time to seal a 21-7, 19-21, 21-14 victory at the Karnataka Badminton Association courts.

In the title clash on Saturday, Farid will lock horns with fourth seed Talar Laa, who dished out an impressive display to slam the door on second-seeded C Rahul Yadav 21-14, 21-7.
Having defeated sixth seed Kanishq M 21-16, 21-19 in the quarterfinal clash earlier in the day, Farid seemed to take off from where he had left off, almost toying with a clueless Ansal.

Relying heavily on his smashes, Farid often caught Ansal flat-flooted with his power game. Uttar Pradesh’s Ansal, however, came back storming in the second. He moved Farid around a lot more, engaging the top seed in longer rallies and hardly giving him time and space to execute his dreaded smashes.

Leading 15-11, Ansal then started to lose the plot as unforced errors starting creeping that allowed Farid to launch a comeback and push the game on a knife-edge at 19-19. Going for broke, Farid then smashed long before Ansal stretched the match into a decider with a fine winner.

Farid and Ansal fought tooth and nail in the opening stages of the decider but the former started to take control as the game wore on, sealing his final berth with a brilliant smash.
In the under-19 semifinals, Shreyansh Jaiswal beat Dharmendar Kaushal 21-16, 21-18 while Harsheel Dani got the better of Arun George 21-18, 21-16.

Semifinal results (prefix denotes seeding): Boys: U-19: Singles: 5-Shreyansh Jaiswal (Cg) bt 6-Dharmendar Kaushal 21-16, 21-18; 2-Harsheel Dani (AI) bt 3-Arun George (Ker) 21-18, 21-16. Doubles: 1-Shyam Prasad (Ker)/ Ramachandran Shlok (Mah) bt Harshit Agarwal (Kar)/ Rajan Karan (TN) 21-18, 21-23, 21-17; 2-K Chaitanya Reddy/ Santosh Ravuri (AP) bt Rupinder Singh/ Kawaldeep Singh (Chg) 21-16, 21-16.

U-17: Singles: 1-Daniel S Farid (Kar) bt Ansal Yadav (UP) 21-7, 19-21, 21-14; 4-Talar Laa (AI) bt 2-C Rahul Yadav (AP) 21-14, 21-7.

Doubles: 3-Rohan Kapoor/ Saurabh Sharma (Har) bt 1-Talar Laa (AI)/ Chirag (Utr) 21-15, 10-21, 21-15; 2-Arjun MR (Ker)/ Chirag Shetty (Mah) bt 8-Kapil Chaudhry/ Chandrabhushan Tripathi (UP) 21-10, 21-11.

Girls: U-19: Singles: 1-Reshma Karthik (AI) bt Shikha Gautam (Mah) 21-18, 21-15; 4-Rasika Raje (Mah) bt Revati Devasthale (Mah) 21-17, 21-10.

Doubles: 5-Sruthi KP/ Farha Mather (Ker) bt Sinymol PS/ Ashna Roy (Ker) 21-15, 21-12; Vaishnavi Iyer (Kar)/ Reshma Karthik (AI) bt 3-D Sudha Kalyani (AP)/ Haritha MH (Ker) 21-19, 22-20.

U-17: Singles: 1-Karishma Wadkar (Mah) bt 3-Anoushka Parikh (Guj) 21-16, 21-17; 11-Shikha Gautam (Mah) bt 2-Shriyanshi Pardeshi (MP) 21-11, 21-12.

Mixed doubles: U-19: 3-Chirag Sen/ Garg Kuhoo (Utr) bt 7-V Gangadhara Rao/ D Sudha Kalyani (AP) 21-17, 21-4; 2-Santosh Ravuri/ S Ram Poorvisha (Kar) bt Adarsh Binoy/ Shruthi KP 21-18, 21-14.