New Delhi, Sep 23: India’s 16-member badminton squad on Saturday left for Spokane (Washington, USA) to participate in the upcoming BWF World Junior Championships, from September 25-October 8.
The squad members attended a training camp organised by the Badminton Association of India at the National Centre of Excellence in Guwahati from September 1-20 before embarking on the trip.
The Indian squad features the Odisha Open 2022 champion Unnati Hooda and the two-time U-19 All India Junior Ranking champion Ayush Shetty.
“The three-week training camp was aimed at strengthening skills of players and also improving team bonding as they will be competing in the team championship along with individual events,” said BAI general secretary Sanjay Mishra in a statement.
The training camp was supervised by singles’ coach Park Tae-sang, Umendra Rana, Rinky Singh and doubles’ coach Akshay Dewalkar along with the other coaches of the National Centre of Excellence.
The shuttlers also took part in intra-squad practice matches to get used to the team event format of the World Championships. The tournament will start with team events from September 25-30 whereas the singles’ events will be held from October 2-8.
In Group D, India are clubbed with Germany, Brazil, Cook Islands and the Dominican Republic.
India will start their campaign against Cook Islands on September 25. The top two teams from each group will qualify for the next stage. Last year, S Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian had won the silver medal in the boys’ singles in Spain.
India’s squad (team event):
Boys’ singles: Ayush Shetty, Tushar Suveer, Lokesh Reddy, Nicholas Nathan Raj
Girls’ singles: Unnati Hooda, Tara Shah, Devika Sihag, Shriyanshi Valishetty
Boys’ doubles: Nicholas Nathan Raj/Tushar Suveer, Divyam Arora/Mayank Rana
Girls’ doubles: Radhika Sharma/Tanvi Sharma, Vennala K/Shriyanshi Valishetty
Mixed doubles: Samarveer/Radhika Sharma, Sathwik Reddy K/Vaishnavi Khadkekar. PTI
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