Ashmita Chaliha and Kidambi Srikanth clinched victories in the men's and women's singles, respectively, at the Badminton Association of India's...
Digital Desk: Ashmita Chaliha and Kidambi Srikanth clinched victories in the men's and women's singles, respectively, at the Badminton Association of India's (BAI) selection trials for the Asian Games.
Srikanth, the silver medalist at the 2021 World Championships, and Chaliha claimed their authority by remaining unbeaten in six matches over the four-day trials.
Srikanth, who had won group A with three wins, defeated Siddhanth Gupta 21-13 21-16 before defeating Lakshya Sen in stage 2 of the trials on Sunday.
The former world number one beat national champion Mithun Manjunath 22-24, 21-13, 21-14 on Saturday. While Srikanth topped stage 2, Lakshya finished second in the 1-4 rankings, with his loss against the former being the only flaw on an otherwise perfect record.
The Commonwealth Games champion has four victories to top group B. On Sunday, Lakshya overcame Manjunath 21-17 21-8, before losing to Srikanth. In his opening stage 2 encounter on Saturday, he defeated Gupta 21-17 21-11.
Manjunath finished third in the 1-4 rankings in stage 2 with two losses and one victory.
In the women's singles, Chaliha and Anupama Upadhyaya took the first two spots, followed by Malvika Bansod in stage 2, while Unnati Hooda finished fourth after losing all three matches.
According to the format, nine men's singles players and eight women's singles players have entered the trials for three spots each, while men's and mixed doubles have four entries each, and women's doubles have three.
In Stage 1, the singles players were divided into two groups, with the top two players in each group progressing to Stage 2.
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