Manipur lad wins U-19 All India Junior Ranking Badminton title

Our Correspondent

Imphal, May 27 (EMN): Young badminton player Maisnam Meiraba Luwang from Manipur clinched another title by bagging the U-19 boys’ single title in All India Junior Ranking Badminton Tournament 2019.

The tournament was organised by Tamil Nadu Badminton Association under the aegis of Badminton Association of India from May 23-26 at Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

All India Junior Ranking Badminton Tournament 2019 was a kind of selection tournament of Junior India Team for the upcoming Asia Junior Championships-2019 to be held at Suzhow in China from July 20-28.

This is Meiraba’s 3rd time consecutive win in the U-19 boys’ single event of the National level tournaments.

In the finals of the recent Ranking Badminton Tourney on Sunday, the young ace shuttler from Manipur outplayed Aakash Yadav of Delhi before the latter had to submit to injury. Meiraba reached the final with an overwhelming 21-13, 21-11 win against Sathish Kumar of Tamil Nadu in the semi-final. In the quarter final, he defeated Imam Sonowal of Assam 24-22, 21-16.

Meiraba got the better of Rajasthan’s Shubham Patel 21-18, 21-13 in the first round before a 21-8, 23-21 triumph against Bharat Raghav of Haryana and a 21-11, 21-11 win against Rohan Gurbani of Maharashtra in the second and the third round.

Apart from Meiraba’s success, another shuttler Dingku Singh Konthoujam also made Manipur proud by winning mixed doubles title after he paired with Maharashtra’s Ritika Thaker to thrash Ishaan Bhatnagar and Tanisha Crasto 21-18, 21-12 in the final to win the title.

Unluckily the pair of Dingku Singh and Kh Manjit Singh went down 18-19, 12-21 to the pair of Ishaan Bhatnagar and Vishnuvardhan Goud P in the final to finish runners-up of the boys’ double competition.