By 
Sankar Muthusamy’s dream run in the BWF World Junior Championships in Santander, Spain, came to an end on Sunday when he lost in the men’s singles final clash against Chinese Taipei’s Kuo Kuan Lin.
The fourth Indian looked off-colour on the day but still did well enough in the championship to settle for a silver. He lost the final of the men’s singles competition at the BWF Junior World Championship against Kuo KL of Chinese Taipei in straight games 14-21, 20-22.
Sankar has now become only the fourth Indian to win a silver medal in the competition after Aparna Popat (1996), Saina Nehwal (2006), and Siril Verma (2015) with Saina Nehwal bagging the only world junior crown for the country in 2008. He has also become the only second Indian male shuttler to play the final of the event, after Lakshya Sen in 2018.
🥈 FOR SANKAR 🙌
What a campaign for our young shuttler!👏
Keep it up champ 🔝🚀@himantabiswa | @sanjay091968 #BWFWorldJuniorChampionships#IndiaontheRise#badminton pic.twitter.com/F9Plfpsjf4
— BAI Media (@BAI_Media) October 30, 2022
The Chinese started in typically aggressive fashion and took a 9-4 lead with a series of quick smashes. Sankar displayed his defensive play was to stay in points by elongating the rallies but his opponent proved too strong for him to handle in the early exchanges as Kuo snapped up the opening game 21-14.
It looked like the Taipei shuttler would race to the crown after opening up a 20-14 lead. But Sankar, the junior world No 4, fought back in the second game by not giving up, just hanging in there and keeping the shuttle in play.
From a near impossible position after trailing 14-20 in the second game, the 18-year-old took six successive championship points to level the scores at 20-20. But Kuo once again came back in the game by using his typical jump smashes to finish the 48-minute contest at the scores of 20-22.
Despite losing the final, Sankar raised some great hope for Indian badminton’s future, as he does not come from the traditional badminton schools of Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
“This is quite a creditable achievement. He has been performing well. Even in the senior ranking tournaments, he beat some of the older players. He needs to develop more strength and power but at the moment he is very consistent and can retrieve well,” U Vimal Kumar, former chief national coach and current selection committee member, said from Bengaluru.
Sankar’s coach, Aravindan Samiappan, who has trained him for the last 12 years at the Fireball Badminton Academy in Mogappair, Chennai explained that Sankar’s game is based on defence, just like Japanese two-time world champion Kento Momota. “Sankar is a very smart player. He is very tactical. He doesn’t have that strength but compensates for it with a sharp brain, with the variations in the game,” Samiappan said from Santander.
Comments