BAI names 24-member squad for BWF World junior badminton championship

Lakshya Sen and Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy will lead the boys and girls team respectively at the Li Ning BWF World Junior Badminton Championships 2018, the Badminton Association of India (BAI) announced on Saturday.

Thirteen boys and eleven girls are part of the 24-member squad selected to represent India in the tournament, slated to be held at Markham (Canada) from November 5 to 18.

The squad members were selected on the basis of ranking points they obtained in the back-to-back All India Ranking Selection Tournaments - Yonex Sunrise Badminton Tournament at Chandigarh and the Yonex Sunrise Krishna Khaitan Memorial Tournament at Panchkula.

The selection committee considered the cumulative points from both the ranking tournaments for picking the players with Kiran George leading the pack with 700 points among boys.

In fact, the Kerala boy and Alap Mishra from Madhya Pradesh were tied at 700 points each after the two tournaments, but Kiran pushed Alap to the second spot on head-to-head match-ups.

In the women's singles, Malvika Bansod, the winner of both events, from Maharashtra led the points table with 1000 points with Pullela Gayatri Gopichand, the runner-up at Panchkula and a semi-finalist at Chandigarh, was placed behind Malvika at 775 points. Wherever there was a case of tie, it was broken through head to head superiority.

The BAI has organized a preparatory camp for the players selected for the World Juniors in Panchkula from October 16 to 31. The BAI has made it mandatory for all members of the squads to attend the 16-day camp.

Squads:

Boys- Lakshya Sen, Kiran George, Alap Mishra, Priyanshu Rajawat, Dhruv Kapila, G. Krishna Prasad, K. Manjit Singh, K. Dingku Singh, Sai Krishna Sai Kumar, Sai Krishna Sai Kumar Podile, P. Vishnuvardhan Goud, Navneet Bokka, Akshan Shetty.

Girls: Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy, Malvika Bansod, P. Gayatri Gopichand, Purve Bhave, Sahiti Bandi, R. Tanushree, Aditi Bhatt, Tanisha Crasto, K. Ashwini Bhatt, Shrishti Jupaddi, Rashi Lambe.

--IANS

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