Lucky Lakshmi to meet Meenakshi

Hyderabad, December 6: Top seed P Gopi Chand and third seed Ajit Wijetilak entered the men's final, while Olympian PVV Lakshmi and junior ...

Hyderabad, December 6: Top seed P Gopi Chand and third seed Ajit Wijetilak entered the men’s final, while Olympian PVV Lakshmi and junior National champion BR Meenakshi clash in the women’s section in the Servo Indian Oil Asian Satellite badminton tournament held at Lal Bahadur Indoor Stadium today.

On the penultimate day, the sparse crowd expected a neck-and-neck battle between Gopi Chand and Siddharth Jain, the finalists in the recently concluded Scottish Open in Edinburgh. That was not to be. Gopi toyed with his opponent dismissing him 15-7 15-1 in 41 minutes. The other semifinal encounter between Chetan Anand and third seed Ajit Wijetilak was engrossing.

In the women’s semi-finals, BR Meenakshi defeated T Murgunde 11-7 13-11.

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The other finalist, PVV Lakshmi, should consider herself lucky as she was left off the hook by Divya Ramesh in the quarter-finals. Divya Ramesh won the first game 11-6 and in the second was just one point away from the coveted final berth. Divya, in a hurry to finish thematch, committed an unnecessary service blunder enabling Lakshmi to hit back. Scores were leveled at 10-10 and later Divya had another chance at 12-11 but faltered to surrender the game and later the match to Lakshmi.

Results
Men singles (semis): P Gopi Chand (Ind) bt Siddharth Jain (Ind) 15-7 15-1; Ajit Wijetilak (Ind) bt Chetan Anand (Ind) 10-15 15-9 15-10; Doubles (semis): Jaseel Ismail & Vincent Lobo (Ind) bt Thomas Kurien & Anuj Gupta (Ind) 15-5 15-6; Rajeev Bagga & Vinod Kumar (Ind) bt Vijaydeep Singh & Bristow Markose (Ind) 15-12 17-15.

Women singles (semis): BR Meenakshi (Ind) bt T Murgunde (Ind) 11-7 13-11; PVV Lakshmi (Ind) bt Parul Priyadarshini (Ind) 11-6 11-1; (QF): Meenakshi (Ind) bt G Jwala (Ind) 11-7 11-5; Parul (Ind) bt Ketki Thakkar (Ind) 11-2 11-4; Murgunde (Ind) bt Ch Deepthi (Ind) 13-10 8-11 11-3; Lakshmi (Ind) bt Divya Ramesh (Ind) 6-11 13-12 11-3.

Doubles (semis): PVV Lakshmi & Archana Deodhar (Ind) bt G Jwala & Shruti (Ind) 15-9 15-11; KetkiThakkar & T Murgunde (Ind) bt BR Meenakshi Ch Deepthi (Ind) 15-4 15-12.