NEW DELHI: India’s wait for a second gold medal from the BWF World Junior Championships continues after Tanvi Sharma lost in straight games to Thailand’s Anyapat Phichitpreechasak in the women’s singles final at Guwahati on Sunday.
Though the 16-year-old started on a spirited note, the Indian top seed’s challenge fizzled out as second seed Anyapat won 15-7, 15-12 in 28 minutes at the National Centre of Excellence.
Saina Nehwal is the only Indian to have won gold at the prestigious junior tournament, at Pune in 2008. Saina also had a runner-up finish (2006), besides Aparna Popat (women’s singles, 1996), Siril Verma (men’s singles, 2015) and Sankar Muthusamy (men’s singles, 2022).
Indians who have won bronze are RMV Gurusaidutt (2008), HS Prannoy (2010), B Sai Praneeth (2010), Sameer Verma (2011), Lakshya Sen (2018) and Ayush Shetty (2023) – all in men’s singles.
Tanvi struggled to find her rhythm in the opening game as she tried to win quick points and ended up making many errors. Anyapat’s quick reading of her flat pushes and flick tosses also did not help the junior world No.2 Indian’s cause. The Thai won seven straight points from 5-6 to take a sizeable lead and then closed out the game in just nine minutes.
The home player looked much more comfortable playing her strokes after the change of ends as she began serving short for the first time in the tournament and took six straight points to go 6-1 up.
But junior world No.1 Anyapat was quick to change tactics as she then began engaging Tanvi in longer rallies, playing the patient game to induce errors from the girl who trains at the venue under Korean coach Park Tae-sang. She reeled off seven points in a row once again to open up a four-point advantage at 12-8.
Tanvi continued to try, catching out her opponent with her flick pushes and slow drops but Anyapat, 17, managed to stay alive in the rallies and eventually closed out the match with a stick smash to leave the 4,000 capacity crowd that had turned up to witness an Indian win the junior Worlds for the first time in 17 years disappointed.
“I was not comfortable. From the start of the match, I made a lot of mistakes. In the second game, I did manage to play my strokes but once again I ended up making mistakes after 8-5. After that, my coach told me to keep playing and I did that. But she was reading my strokes very well,” said Tanvi.
In the boys’ singles final, China’s Liu Yang Ming Yu avenged his loss in the Asian Junior Championships earlier this year to beat top seed Mohd Zaki Ubaidillah of Indonesia 15-10, 15-11.
China’s Tan Ke Xuan/Wei Yue Yue clinched the girls doubles with a 15-13, 19-17 win over Zi Yu Low/Noraqilah Maisarah of Malaysia while Lee Hyeong-woo and Cheon Hye-in of South Korea defeated Hung Bing Fu/Chou Yun An of Chinese Taipei 15-9, 11-15, 15-10 to bag the mixed doubles title.
