Lucknow: Banga Beats registered their maiden win in the Indian Badminton League as they managed to conquer hosts Awadhe Warriors 4-1 at the BBD Academy complex here on Sunday.
Parupalli Kashyap displayed his brilliant skills and maintained his cool in tense moments to win his tie against compatriot Srikanth. In the all-important men’s singles clash, World number 14th Kashyap was up against Srikanth who gave him a jolt by taking a head start. Srikanth was a treat to watch from the very beginning as his smashes were coming really good, which were combined with some brilliant placement.
Kashyap did very well to take the score line of the first game to 20-20 but a close line call went into the favour of Srikanth and consequently he claimed the opening game of the tie.
Kashyap was in no mood to allow Srikanth to dominate and won the second game for the equaliser. He optimized on the errors of Srikanth and came up with some exquisite smashes to post his maiden win of the tournament.
Meanwhile in the another fixture of men’s singles, Hu Yun managed to outwit Chong Weng Fei. Chong did play his heart-out in the second game of the match but because of the unforced efforts, he lost the opportunity of taking the match into the third game.
The World No. 8 from Hong Kong didn’t take much time and capitalized on the mistakes of Chong which allowed him to claim the first game. Yun landed on a wrong foot as he started committing back to back errors which gave his Malaysian opponent a lead of four points, 14-10, in this intense battle.
But Hu Yun turned the tables with his stunning smashes with some outstanding rallies with subtle variation. When he was locked with Malaysian at 20-20 and was ready to for another thrilling contest, it was the long hit from Chong which made his life easy.
Meanwhile, the biggest disappointment of the day was PV Sindhu who couldn’t taste her first victory of IBL. Spaniard Carolina Marin outplayed the bronze medallist of World badminton Championship in the straight sets by 21-16, 21-13. With this win, supporters of Banga Beats were on seventh heaven as the Spanish girl was playing her first game of this million dollar tournament.
Carolina was playing more towards the net and that too with a brisk pace which was enough to put Sindhu in enigma and consequently she started making unforced errors which shattered her confidence. With self-motivation and self-confidence already hit the rock-bottom, the deceptive shots Spanish were more like a salt to the injury for Sindhu.
Carolina kept coming up with winners one after the other and ended up winning the very crucial encounter with a great ease.
The inconsequential mixed doubles match went in favour of Banga Beats.
Results:
Banga Beats bt Awadhe Warriors 4-1 (Hu Yun bt Chong Wei Fei 21-11, 21-20; Carolina Marin bt P.V. Sindhu 21-16, 21-13; Carsten Mogensen & Akshay Dewalkar lost to Mathias Boe & Markis Kido 14-21, 19-21; P. Kashyap bt K. Srikanth 20-21, 21-11, 21-9; Carsten Mogensen & Carolina Marin bt Markis Kido & K. Maneesha 20-21, 21-16, 11-8).
