Kanpur: Neer Nehwal and Kuhu Sharma caused an upset in the final, defeating top-seeded players, and won the men’s and women’s group titles of Yonex Sunrise Late Sitaram Pandey memorial UP state Senior Major Badminton tournament concluded here at the indoor hall of Green Park stadium on Sunday.
Second-seeded Neer of Noida drubbed top-seeded Siddharth Mishra of Lucknow in two straight games by 15-10, 16-14. In the women’s doubles final, the pair of Riddhi Bhardwaj & Shruti Chauhan (Hapur/Noida) won the title by defeating Neha Pal & Vibhuti Sinha (Varanasi/Unnao) by 15-4, 15-5. At the final stage of the game, luck favoured Neer and he earned two points in a row and won the title.
For Neer, the first game was an easy affair in comparison to the second one, in which Siddharth challenged him for each point. The two led the games simultaneously and got parity several times. Siddarth Mishra had beaten Rajan Yadav of UPP. The pair of Archit Sinha (Unnao) and Shivam Verma (Lakhimpur Kheri) defeated Ayush Agarwal and Daksh Gautam (Agra) to clinch the winner’s trophy in men’s doubles.
Neer, earlier in thesemi-finals, drubbed third-seeded Siddharth Salar of Lakhimpur Kheri.
Kuhu, a top-seeded player in the Under-17 and Under-19 groups, was lucky. By that time, Kuhu was leading by 21-19, 8-2. The Agra girl outplayed her fellow city player, top-seeded Divyanshi Gautam, who left the game and match when she pulled a leg muscle. The first game between the two was well contested. There were long rallies for each point. Both displayed attacking and defensive games.