National Badminton selection trials for Asian Games 2023: Lakshya Sen, Malvika Bansod win

Lakshya Sen defeated Bharat Raghav in straight sets in the men’s singles category of the round five match of group B to kick off his campaign with a win in the national badminton selection trials for the upcoming Asian Games at Jwala Gutta Academy of Excellence in Telangana on Thursday.

Sen, the 2022 Commonwealth gold medallist, went past Raghav in 30 minutes with a score of 21-14, 21-9.

Mithun Manjunath defeated Maisnam Meiraba in a hard-fought three-set match that lasted one hour and two minutes.

The four-seeded Mithun won with the score of 22-20, 12-21 and 21-11.

Sen leads the five-player group B having won the two games he played. The Thomas Cup winner defeated Maisnam Meiraba after losing the second set in round four 21-14, 18-21, 21-16.

Ashmita Chaliha and Unnati Hooda won their games in the women’s singles category of group A against Shriyanshi Valishetty and Aakarshi Kashyap, respectively.

While in women’s singles group B, Malvika Bansod and Aditi Bhatt started with wins over Aalisha Naik and Anupama Upadhyaya, respectively.

Hooda and Bansod notched up their second wins later in the evening against Valishetty and Naik, respectively.

The Badminton Association of India (BAI) is holding a trial until May 7 to select the team for the Asian Games, which will be held from September 23 to October 8 in Hangzhou, China.

BAI had directly selected double Olympic medallist PV Sindhu (World No. 11), HS Prannoy (world no. 9), men’s pairing of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy (World No. 6) and women’s combination of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand (world no. 19) for the Asian Games “based on their placing in the BWF Top 20 ranking list as on April 18”.