All India Senior Ranking: Pratul Joshi, Mugdha Agrey crowned champions

Men’s singles top seed Pratul Joshi and women’s singles ninth seed Mugdha Agrey were crowned the champions at the All India Senior Ranking Badminton Tournament 2017 that concluded at Guntur, Andhra Pradesh on Thursday.

The men’s doubles title went to the newly-formed partnership of Tarun Kona and Nandagopal Kidambi, who were seeded fourth. In women’s doubles, the sixth seeded pair of Aparna Balan and Sruthi KP emerged victorious while the mixed doubles title was won by the unseeded duo of Shivam Sharma and Poorvisha S Ram.

Pratul Joshi did not drop a game in the summit clash where he finished with a 22-20, 21-17 victory over the unseeded Kiran George in 45 minutes.

George had been a giant-killer at this tournament and had accounted for the second seed Shubham Prajapati, the fourth seed Harshit Aggarwal, the sixth seed Rahul Yadav Chittaboina and the 11th seed Aneeth Kumar in the five rounds that he played before the final.

Agrey had toppled the top seed earlier

In women’s singles, Mugdha Agrey caused an upset in the final by stunning the third seed Sai Uttejitha Rao Chukka 21-15, 24-22 in 38 minutes.

Agrey had been in impeccable form throughout the tournament and had halted the run of the top seed Shriyanshi Pardeshi in the third round and the fourth seed Anura Prabhudesai in the semi-finals.

The fourth seeded men’s doubles pair of Kona and Nandagopal too had made a big scalp of the second seeds Utkarsh Arora and Vighnesh Devlekar in the semi-finals. In the final, they put on a confident show to prevail 21-8, 21-13 over the third seeds Chaitanya Reddy K and Hemanagendra Babu T.

Women’s doubles eighth seeds Jakkampudi and Ram had shown nerves of steel to get the better of the top seeds Agna Anto and Sneha Santhilal in three games in the quarter-finals. They, however, could not replicate that effort in the final and went down 13-21, 16-21 to the eighth seeds Aparna Balan and Sruthi KP in a 50 minute battle.

The mixed doubles final turned out to be a thrilling contest between two evenly-matched, unseeded teams wherein the team of Sharma and Ram emerged a 20-22, 21-10, 21-13 winner.