Top shuttlers P V Sindhu and P Kashyap won their respective matches to lead BPCL and IOCL respectively to women's and men's team championship finals on the opening day of the 35th PSPB Inter-Unit Badminton tournament here today.
In the women's team championship, BPCL beat ONGC 2-0 in the semifinals, with Sindhu got the better of P C Thulasi 21-9, 21-10. In the doubles, Sindhu teamed up with Jwala Gutta to beat Ashwini Ponnappa and Thulasi 24-22, 21-15.
BPCL will meet EIL in the women's team championship final tomorrow. EIL beat GAIL 2-0 in the other semifinal at the DDA Squash and Badminton Stadium at Siri Fort.
In the men's team championship, IOCL thrashed HPCL 3-0 in the semifinals, with Kashyap easily beating Laa Talar 21-13, 21-13. In the other two matches, K Srikanth beat Shubhankar Dey 21-19, 21-15 and in the doubles, Arun Vishnu and Srikanth beat Dey and Shyam Prasad 21-19, 21-14.
IOCL play against ONGC in the men's team championship final tomorrow. ONGC beat BPCL 3-0 in the other men's semifinals.
National champion Saurabh Verma beat Aditya Prakash 15-21, 21-17, 21-15 in a closely contested semifinal match to give ONGC a 1-0 up. Sai Praneeth then beat Arvind Bhat 20-22, 21-18, 21-11. In the doubles, ONGC won after the opponents retired.
In the veteran's team championship semifinals, BPCL beat EIL 2-0, while GAIL prevailed over ONGC by the same margin.
The men's and women's singles matches will also begin tomorrow.
