Khelo Badminton: Maha shuttlers in hunt for three gold medals

Hosts Maharashtra lined up a shot at three gold medals from the Khelo India Youth Games badminton court with impressive performances in the semi-finals here on Saturday.

Nagpur's Malvika Bansod produced a dominant performance to beat Tamil Nadus Nivetha Muthukumar 21-12, 21-13 and reach the girls U-21 singles final.

She will meet top seed Aakarshi Kashyapof Chhatisgarh in the gold medal clash, a media release issued here said.

In the boys event, it will be a clash for top honours betweenMaharashtra's Aman Farogh Sanjay, the number one seed, and Rahul Bhardwaj of Karnataka.

In a third success for the host state on the day, Arya Deshpande and Ananya Phadke defeated Navdha Mangalam and Sonali Singh of UP and will take on Rajasthan's Sakshi Asrani and Ankushka Mehta in the girls doubles final, it said.

In the boy's semis, Aman had to battle to get past Priyanshu Rajwat of Madhya Pradesh.

The Maharashtra lad won the first set 21-13 comprehensively, but was error-prone in the second to lose it 10-21.

Aman recovered quickly in the decider to shut out Priyanshu 21-14 and go though to the title match against Bhardwaj, who upsetthird seed Dhruv Rawat of Uttarakhand 21-9, 21-10 in just 22 minutes.

In the girl's U-17 singles semis, fourth seed Mir Tasnim Ali of Gujarat came from behind to beat top seed Aditi Bhatt of Uttar Pradesh 17-21, 21-17, 21-12 and will meet second seed Mansi Singh of Uttar Pradesh in the final after the latter ousted Delhi's Aashi Rawat 21-19, 21-19.

The match of the day was in the boys U-17 semi-finals as top seed Gandham Pranav Rao from Telangana got the better of Arunachal Pradesh's Tukum Laa 21-19, 12-21, 21-12, the release stated.