Pune: Pune Pistons overpowered Banga Beats to win the tie by 4-1 in the Indian Badminton League match at Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, Balewadi here on Friday. The defeat also led Banga Beats out of the race.
It was a great day for Pune who won four matches in a row and sealed the tie comprehensively. The highlight of the day was the match between Sourabh Varma and Parupalli Kashyap in which Varma had the last laugh.
Anup Sridhar pulled off the biggest upset of the day when he won his match by 21-12, 21-18 against Hu Yun in the first men's singles which gave Pune Pistons the head-start they were looking for.
Anup was trailing by 1-4 but he turned the tables and with his first break, the Banglorean took the lead of 7-5. After that, came in his series of smashes which was good enough to outfox Yun as he extended the lead to 14-7 and after that he simply pinned him down in the opening game by 21-12.
The second game started on the footnote of the first, as Yun managed to take an early lead by 7-6 which he did extended to 14-12 but failed to keep his composure and Anup got the opportunity to break in with his powerful smashes which was the highlight of the day.
The current world no.129 finally managed to edge past Yun in the second set too and handed him over the defeat in straight sets.
World number three Juliane Schenk kept the good run going for Pistons as she won her match comfortably against Carolina Marin by 21-20 21-10 in the women's singles. Juliane was looking in great touch as she took the lead of 7-1 against Carolina. But Spaniard did well to make a comeback to reduce the lead to 10-14 at the second break. Being an experienced campaigner, Juliane responded to this pressure situation really well and didn’t allow Carolina to take an edge and ultimately won the first game by 21-20.
Carolina tried her best to keep Juliane on her toes in the second game and even succeeded up to an extent but once Juliane took the lead from 7-6 she was altogether a different player. She managed to accelerate the pace of the game and went onto take a lead by 14-7 at the second break. Juliane soon gave her side a 2-0 lead.
Later, the loss of Carsten Mogensen and Akshay Dewalkar in men’s doubles by 18-21, 18-21 against the veteran pair of Joachim Fischer Nielsen and Kiong Tan Wee sealed the fate for Banga Beats.
In the most exciting contest of the day, Parupalli Kashyap lost his match to Sourabh Verma in the men’s singles event. World no. 14, Kashyap, won the first game by a slender margin of 21-19 but was stunned by Varma in the next two games who came up with 21-18 and 11-4 to give Pune 4-0 lead.
In another dead-rubber of the day, Ashwini Ponnappa and Joachim Fischer Nielsen got some hard fight from the pair of Carolina Marin and Carsten Mogensen. Pistons took the early lead by claiming the first game but Banga Beats got their act right to make a much-needed comeback by 21-14. Marin and Mogensen gave their side Banga Beats a consolation win by winning the third game.
