Santander (Spain): The Indian team came from a match down to beat Australia 3-2 in its Group B tie at the World Junior Mixed Team Badminton Championships 2022, here on Tuesday.
The men’s doubles pair of Arsh Mohammad and Abhinav Thakur lost India’s first match of the tie 12-21, 17-21 to Ricky Tang and Otto Xing de Zhao.
The 14-year-old Unnati Hooda, ranked junior world No. 5 in the badminton world rankings, then brought India level with a comfortable 21-6, 21-9 victory over Sydney Go in the women’s singles.
In the third match of the day, which was the men’s singles contest, India’s Bharat Raghav went 19-21, 21-16, 15-21 to Jack Yu. However, India drew level once again as Isharani Baruah and Devika Sihag beat Dania Nugroho and Catrina Chia-Yu Tan 21-8, 21-8 in the women’s doubles.
In the fifth and deciding match on the day, the mixed doubles pair of Vignesh Thathineni and Srinidhi Naryanan registered a 21-12, 21-16 win over Otto Xing de Zhao and Yuelin Zhang to help India to victory.
With this, the Indian team now sits second in Group B with two points from three ties. The team blanked Iceland 5-0 before losing by a similar scoreline to China on the opening day.
India will now have to beat Slovenia in their final group tie on Wednesday and hope that China loses to either Iceland or Australia to have a chance of making the BWF World Junior Mixed Team Championships quarter-finals.
(IANS)
