NEW DELHI: Top seed Unnati Hooda, who became the first Indian women's singles shuttler to reach the U-17 final, went down against Sarunrak Vitidsarn of Thailand in the summit clash at the Badminton Asia Junior Championships in Nonthaburi, Thailand on Sunday.
Apart from Unnati, the men’s doubles pair of Arsh Mohammad and Sanskar Saraswat and U-15 men’s singles shuttler Anish Thoppani signed off with silver medals at the event.
Earlier, men’s singles shuttler Gnana Dattu and men’s doubles pair Bjorn Jaison and Aathish Sreenivas PV had secured bronze medals in U-15 category.
All the three Indian finalists lost the first game and then staged a fightback to win the second, but failed to seal the third game in their favour.
After losing the first game 18-21, Unnati dominated the next game 21-9. The third was neck and neck till 14-14 before the Thai raced to victory, clinching the decider 21-14.
While, Anish was little awry at the beginning and his opponent from Chinese Taipei took full advantage of that to win the first game 21-8. Anish regrouped in the second game to force a decider.
Anish was always seen calming himself despite tense situations and that yielded results as he pocketed the tougher second game 24-22.
The decider was a close affair but errors on crucial points hurt Anish's chances as he went down 21-19 in the final game.
