Sankar Muthusamy enters the finals at the BWF World Junior Championships

Indian badminton player S Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian entered the men’s singles final at the World Junior Badminton Championships 2022 with a 21-13, 21-15 win over Thailand’s Panitchaphon Teeraratsakul in the semifinal at Santandar, Spain on Saturday.

With this victory, S Sankar became the first Indian shuttler to reach the Junior Badminton World Championships final since Siril Verma in 2016. Overall, he became the fourth Indian to reach the Junior World Championships final after Aparna Popat, Saina Nehwal and Siril Verma.

18-year-old Sankar looked to take the game to his opponent and score quick points early as he worked his angles well to comfortably bag the first game. The Thai shuttler tried to bounce back by infusing some extra pace and power in the second game. However, Shankar’s technical style and consistent returns frustrated the Thai player as he started making some basic mistakes and placed his shots outside the scoring lines.

The ploy eventually paid off as India’s highest-ranked junior men’s singles player at world No. 4, Sankar showed great athleticism and tactical acumen to beat Teeraratsakul 21-13, 21-15 in a 40-minute men’s U-19 singles semifinal.

SANKAR CREATES HISTORY 🥺🫶

2️⃣nd 🇮🇳 male shuttler to enter finals, beat Teeraratsakul 🇹🇭 21-13, 21-15 in semis.

Grab 🥇 champ! 💪@himantabiswa | @sanjay091968#BWFWorldJuniorChampionships#IndiaontheRise#Badminton pic.twitter.com/ojwQcGHCXz

— BAI Media (@BAI_Media) October 29, 2022

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Sankar, the former junior world No 1, had won a 91 minute marathon quarterfinal against China Hu Zhe An, winning 18-21, 21-8 and 16-21 to confirm a medal for India. However, he showed no signs of fatigue from the quarterfinal, as he controlled the rallies brilliantly in the semifinal match. In his pre-quarters match, he had beaten another Thailand player, winning 21-10, 21-12 over Nachakorn Pusri.

Sankar will face either Chinese Taipei’s Kuo Kuan-lin or South Korean shuttler Kim Byung-jae for the junior final on Sunday.

Former world No. 1 Saina Nehwal who won the women’s singles title in 2008 is India’s only junior badminton world champion till date and Sankar will now aim to become only the second Indian to be crowned world junior champion.