Eye on the prize: Lakshya will be vying to go one step additional after summit conflict losses in 2017 and 2019.
| Photo Credit: FIle Photo: NAGARA GOPAL
Lakshya Sen will be the star attraction in the 76th Inter-State-Inter-Zonal and eighty fifth Senior National badminton championships to be held right here from December 18 to 24.
The 22-year-old, nevertheless, will compete solely in the open occasions (singles) beginning on December 20.
The crew occasions (males & ladies) starting on Monday will witness the seven groups (winners of zonal & inter-institutional occasions plus the host) preventing for the honours.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) seems to be the favorite on paper in each males’s and girls’s sections. The crew is spearheaded by India No.1 Kartikey Gulshan Kumar and Alap Mishra (No.5) in singles, and with help from doubles specialists, Ravi Krishna and Achutaditya Rao.
The AAI ladies’s crew, too, appears to be like formidable. With Mansi Singh (India No.4) in singles, and India No.1 and No.3 in doubles Priya Devi Konjengbam and Arul Bala, AAI has the wherewithal to bag the crown.
Indian Railways, Central Zone champion in women and men classes, is anticipated to supply fairly a troublesome problem in the males’s class. In its ranks, it has India No.6 Mithun Manjunath and Kaushal Dharmamer (India ranked 13) with doubles specialists Hemanagendra Babu and Sai Pratheek for firm.
The Karnataka males’s crew will be no pushover because it has reigning World Junior Championship bronze medallist Ayush Shetty and strong doubles gamers Prakash Raj and H.V. Nithin.
Multiple champions Petroleum Sports Promotion Board (PSPB) will not participate in the crew occasions because it couldn’t take part in the Inter-institution championships (a qualifying occasion for Nationals) as a result of the non-availability of its prime gamers.
In males’s singles, Lakshya will not have it straightforward. Twice, in 2017 (Patna) and 2019 (Guwahati), he misplaced in the ultimate to Sourabh Verma. Sourabh isn’t taking part in right here. Of course, Lakshya will must combat it out with Mithun Manjunath, Ayush Shetty, Kiran George and Priyanshu Rajawat.
The ladies’s singles discipline seems open in the absence of P.V. Sindhu. Anyone from the lot, together with Aakarshi Kashyap, Malvika Bansod, Ashmita Chaliha, and Unnati Hooda can win the title.
The groups: Men: Assam, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Maharashtra, AAI, Indian Railways. Women: Assam, AP, West Bengal, Punjab, AAI, Maharashtra, Indian Railways.
