'Emphasis is on on-court training'

With the BWF World Junior Championships set to kick-off in Yogyakarta, Indonesia from October 9, the training camp in preparation for the tournament is on in full swing here.

The under-19 camp at the Karnataka Badminton Association features prominent names, the likes of Junior World No 1 Lakshya Sen, Karnataka’s rising star Rahul Bharadwaj and national girls’ top seed Aakarshi Kashyap.

Under the watchful eyes of coach Sanjeev Sachdev, the players started the camp with light training exercises on Friday and the intensity picked up on Saturday with players getting a three-hour workout.  

Sachdev revealed that he was happy with what he had seen so far and considering the short duration of the camp, there will be emphasis laid on on-court workouts. 

“Everything is going as per plan. We are concentrating more on training on the court since we have only about 15 days of the camp. They will also face each other and get decent match-practice before leaving for the event,” he said.

“We have about 15 players here (KBA) and two other girls training at the U-17 camp at White Peacock Badminton Academy and they will come to train here tomorrow,” divulged Sachdev commenting on the strength of the squad.

Lakshya won the Bulgarian Open in August and continues to sit atop the junior rankings, while Bharadwaj enjoyed a fine run to the final of the recently concluded Yonex Sunrise India Junior International Grand Prix.

The duo and Aakarshi were the stand out players in the opinion of coach Sachdev.

“There is Lakshya who is junior World No 1 and a fantastic player as we all know. Apart from him, (Rahul) Bharadwaj and Aakarshi are also shaping up really well,” he quipped.

It was also learnt from sources that there will be four entries for the boys’, girls’ and doubles and mixed doubles events.

Earlier this week, Vaishnavi Jakka Reddy and Ira Sharma had pulled out of the World Championships stating different reasons. Vaishnavi, who was originally set to play singles, pulled out citing the selection panel had favoured national coach Pullela Gopichand’s daughter Gayatri for the singles event and grouped her in the doubles category. Ira decided to skip the event due to personal reasons.  It is learnt that Srishti Jupudi would fill in for Ira while a replacement for Vaishnavi is yet to be named.