 "Tanvi Patri won the U-15 girls singles title at the Badminton Asia U-17 & U-15 Junior Championships. Image: BAI")
India’s top junior shuttler Tanvi Patri won the U-15 girls singles final at the Badminton Asia U-17 & U-15 junior championships in Chengdu, China on Sunday. In the final, she beat second seed Nguyen Thi Thu Huygen of Vietnam 22-20, 21-11 in 34 minutes.
India’s previous champions in the junior competition had been Samiya Imad Farooqui — won the U-15 girls singles crown in 2017 — and Tasnim Mir — victorious in the same category in 2019.
Patri, the No. 1 seed, was pushed for a second match running but not enough to play out a deciding third game. In the process, she won the title without dropping a single game.
The 13-year-old Tanvi trailed 11-17 in the first game before producing a miraculous comeback to break the Vietnamese player’s confidence.
Patri had progressed to the final on Saturday with a dominant 21-19, 21-10 win over Thailand’s Kungkaew Kakanik in 31 minutes.
Thi Thu Huygen had made her way into the summit clash on the back of a close encounter with China’s Liu Yu Tong, before winning 21-18, 17-21, 21-19.
On Saturday, Gnana Dattu TT had clinched the bronze medal in the U-17 boys singles category as he went down against Indonesia’s Radithya Bayu Wardhana in three games.
“Tanvi Patri’s title-winning run at the Badminton Asia Championships, along with Gnana Dattu’s bronze medal in the U17 men’s singles category, once again underlines the strong talent pool India possesses and the efforts of the Badminton Association of India to identify and nurture this talent.
“The robust and extremely competitive domestic circuit has been playing an important role in preparing our top players for such major international events. I am confident that we will see many more title triumphs from not just Tanvi and Gnana, but other Indian juniors in the coming times,” said BAI Secretary General Sanjay Mishra.
In the last edition of the championships, India had won the gold medal in the boy’s U-15 singles category and a silver in U-17 girls singles.