BWF Badminton: Lakshya Sen under spotlight for India's campaign

Reigning Asian junior champion Lakshya Sen will spearhead India's campaign at the BWF World Junior Badminton Championships, to be held in Markham, Canada from November 5-18.

A 24-member squad including 13 boys and 11 girls will represent India in the tournament with junior world No. 5 Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy leading the girls' squad.

The BAI has organised a mandatory preparatory camp for the players selected for the World Juniors in Panchkula from October 16-31.

The team members were selected on the basis of ranking points they obtained in the back-to-back All India Ranking Selection Tournaments -- Yonex Sunrise Badminton Tournament at Chandigarh and the Yonex Sunrise Krishna Khaitan Memorial Tournament at Panchkula -- in September.

The selection committee considered the cumulative points from both the ranking tournaments for picking the players with Kiran George leading the pack with 700 points among boys. In fact, the Kerala boy and Alap Mishra from MP were tied at 700 points each after the two tournaments, but Kiran pushed Alap to the second spot on head-to-head match-ups.

In the women's singles, Malvika Bansod, the winner of both events, from Maharashtra led the points table with 1000 points with Pullela Gayatri Gopichand, the runner-up at Panchkula and a semifinalist at Chandigarh, was placed behind Malvika at 775 points.

Men's doubles campaign will be led by Dhruv Kapila and G Krishna Prasad with 1000 points under their belt and Sahiti Bandi and R Tanushree in the women's category with 776 points.

Whereas mixed doubles team will be led by Karnataka mate, Sai Krishna Sai Kumar and Ashwini Bhatt, who secured 852 cumulative points.

The squads:

Boys: Lakshya Sen (AAI), Kiran George (Ker), Alap Mishra (MP), Priyanshu Rajawat (MP), Dhruv Kapila (PNB), G. Krishna Prasad (AP), K. Manjit Singh (MNP), K. Dingku Singh (MNP), Sai Krishna Sai Kumar (KTK), Sai Krishna Sai Kumar Podile (TS) P. Vishnuvardhan Goud (TS), Navneet Bokka (TS), Akshan Shetty (Mah).

Girls: Jakka Vaishnavi Reddy (TS), Malvika Bansod (AAI), P. Gayatri Gopichand (TS), Purve Bhave (AI), Sahiti Bandi (TS), R. Tanushree (TN) Aditi Bhatt (UTR), Tanisha Crasto (Goa), K. Ashwini Bhatt (KTK), Shrishti Jupaddi (TS), Rashi Lambe (Mah).

(With inputs from agencies.)