SPO-KHELO-BADMINTON

Khelo Badminton: Maha shuttlers in hunt for three gold medals

Pune, Jan 12 (PTI)Hosts Maharashtra lined up a shot

at three gold medals from the Khelo India Youth Games

badminton court with impressive performances in the

semi-finals here on Saturday.

Nagpur's Malvika Bansod produced a dominant

performance to beat Tamil Nadus Nivetha Muthukumar 21-12,

21-13 and reach the girls U-21 singles final.

She will meet top seed Aakarshi Kashyapof Chhatisgarh

in the gold medal clash, a media release issued here said.

In the boys event, it will be a clash for top honours

betweenMaharashtra's Aman Farogh Sanjay, the number one seed,

and Rahul Bhardwaj of Karnataka.

In a third success for the host state on the day, Arya

Deshpande and Ananya Phadke defeated Navdha Mangalam and

Sonali Singh of UP and will take on Rajasthan's Sakshi Asrani

and Ankushka Mehta in the girls doubles final, it said.

In the boy's semis, Aman had to battle to get past

Priyanshu Rajwat of Madhya Pradesh.

The Maharashtra lad won the first set 21-13

comprehensively, but was error-prone in the second to lose it

10-21.

Aman recovered quickly in the decider to shut out

Priyanshu 21-14 and go though to the title match against

Bhardwaj, who upsetthird seed Dhruv Rawat of Uttarakhand

21-9, 21-10 in just 22 minutes.

In the girl's U-17 singles semis, fourth seed Mir

Tasnim Ali of Gujarat came from behind to beat top seed Aditi

Bhatt of Uttar Pradesh 17-21, 21-17, 21-12 and will meet

second seed Mansi Singh of Uttar Pradesh in the final after

the latter ousted Delhi's Aashi Rawat 21-19, 21-19.

The match of the day was in the boys U-17 semi-finals

as top seed Gandham Pranav Rao from Telangana got the better

of Arunachal Pradesh's Tukum Laa 21-19, 12-21, 21-12, the

release stated.