Kartik Jindal of CAG and produced one of the biggest upsets in the men’s third round of the 85th Senior National badminton championships here on Thursday.
Kartik’s superior defence enabled him to beat M. Raghu, seeded sixth, 13-21, 21-18, 21-16 and enter the round-of-16. However, the other top players including Lakshya Sen, Kiran George, M. Tharun, M. Mithun sailed into the pre-quarterfinals.
Earlier in the men’s second round, Siddhanth Gupta, the third seed from Tamil Nadu, was beaten by Aditya Joshi of Petroleum 11-21, 21-14, 15-21. However, Aditya couldn’t progress further as he went down fighting to Rounak Chouhan of Chhattisgarh 9-21, 21-17, 15-21 in the third round. Chirag Sen of Railways defeated third seeded Kartikey Gulshan Kumar of AAI 7-21, 21-19, 23-21 in the men’s second round.
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The match between Raghu and Kartik was fought tooth and nail. Raghu, an attacker by instinct, seemed tired at the end in the third, but kept going. On the other hand, Kartik retrieved nearly everything thrown at him. Trailing 10-20 in the third game, Raghu, however, saved six match points before he hit one into the net in trying to take a forehand drop from Kartik. In fact, this is the first time that Kartik has defeated Raghu in four encounters.
The tournament witnessed four pull-outs so far due to injuries in men’s singles: K. Sathish Kumar, S. Sankar Muthusamy (both Tamil Nadu), Ayush Shetty (Karnataka) and Saurav Kapoor (RBI).
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