Harpal Singh Bedi
Gold eluded India as top seed Unnati Hooda, Anish Thoppani and doubles pair of Arsh Mohammad and Sanskar Saraswat failed to cross the final hurdle and finished silver medals at Badminton Asia Junior Championships in Nonthaburi, Thailand on Sunday.
Earlier, Gnana Dattu and doubles pair Bjorn Jaison and Aathish Sreenivas P. V. had secured bronze medals in the boys U-15 category.
In the girls U-17 section Unnati, lost to Sarunrak Vitidsarn of Thailand while, Anish and Arsh/Sanskar fell short against Chinese Taipei’s Chung-Hsiang Yih and Lai Po-Yu/Yi-Hao Lin respectively in the finals.
All three Indian finalists were a game down, won second game, but failed to convert third.
After losing first game 18-21, Unnati dominated next game 21-9. The third was neck to neck till 14-14 before the Thai raced to victory, clinching the decider 21-14.
In the boys u-15 final Anish was little off-beat at the start and his opponent from Chinese Taipei took full advantage of that to win the first game 21-8. Anish regrouped in the second game to force a decider. was always seen calming himself despite tense situations and that yielded result as he pocketed the tougher second game 24-22.
The decider was a close affair but errors on crucial points hurt the Indians chances as he went down 21-19 in the final game.