Juniors Daniel, Karishma, Shreyanshi qualify for badminton nationals

Juniors Daniel S Farid, Shreyanshi Pardeshi and Karishma Wadkar led the charge of the young brigade as they upset their more experienced opponents to qualify for the ATS 78th Senior National Badminton championship at the Siri Fort Auditorium here Tuesday.

U-17 national champion Daniel defeated the experienced Kiran Kumar 21-15, 20-22, 21-6 to reach the men's singles main draw.

Joining him in the men's singles draw were Rohan Castelino, Sachin Rawat, Shreyansh Jaiswal, Nigel D'Sa, Aditya Prakash, Siddharth Thakur and Chetan Anand.

In the women's singles qualifying U-17 nationals runners-up Karishma Wadkar and Shreyanshi Pardeshi stole the show.

Karishma defeated Santoshi Hasini 21-8, 13-21, 21-19 while Shreyanshi got the better of Sampada Sahastrabuddhe 21-16, 21-14.

The other qualifiers in the women's singles are Chitralekha, Rasika Raje, Vaishnavi Iyer, Dhanya Nair, Sri Krishna Priya and K Vaishnavi.

The main draw will commence Friday after the Inter State and Inter Zonal Team Championship.