Misfortune struck 11th seed Sagar Chopda on the verge of victory against Sachin Ratti as a recurrence of a knee-injury forced him to be bodily lifted off the court in the second round of the men's singles in the 75th National badminton championship here on Friday.
On a day when the matches were delayed by over four hours following anelaborate inauguration ceremony, two more seeds fell.
In-form youngster K. Srikanth expectedly defeated fourth seed Rohan Castelino 21-7, 9-21, 21-16 and K. Tanishak easily overpowered 10th seed Eshan Naqvi 21-15, 21-13.
Chopda leads
In the battle between two former National junior champions, Chopda was leading Ratti 21-13, 18-14 when he fell after his left knee was “locked”.
He was due to meet his doctor in New Delhi on Saturday afternoon. Chopda has been nursing knee injuries for the past two years and the recent recurrence means a further blow to career of this Mumbai-based talent.
Problems galore
The delay in holding matches on time meant the schedule could go on past midnight on Friday.
This was in addition to the problems faced by the players in view of the reduction of days of four to three for the completion of the individual events.
There are six courts available spread over two venues.
Chief Referee Anil Singh has been in a spot since Thursday due to the late arrival of the teams.
Many matches had to be pushed to Friday but the long opening ceremony only compounded the woes of the players and the technical officials.
Important results (second round, prefix indicates seeding):
1-Chetan Anand bt Ashish Sharma 22-20, 21-11; K. Tanishak bt 10-Eshan Naqvi 21-15, 21-13.
5-Saurabh Varma bt Nikhilesh Sharma 21-11, 21-13; 14-Aditya Prakash bt Ajay Kumar 21-11, 21-12; 3-K. Nandagopal bt Tanveer Gill 21-15, 21-7.
Sachin Ratti bt 11-Sagar Chopda 13-21, 14-18 (retired); 8-Arvind Bhat bt Prateek Singh 21-13, 21-17; 9-Mohit Kamat bt N. V. S. Vijetha 21-18, 21-19; 12-B. Sumeeth Reddy bt S. Aravind 21-6, 21-10; 7-Ajay Jayaram bt Lalnummawia 21-9, 21-13.
Anand Pawar bt Rohit Ranaut 21-9, 21-10; 15-Guru Sai Dutt bt Vinay Kumar Reddy 21-19, 21-15; 6-H. S. Prannoy bt M. R. Manikandan 21-12, 21-15.
16-B. Sai Praneeth bt Sameer Verma 21-10, 21-16; 2-Anup Sridhar bt Rajas Jawalkar 21-18, 21-14.
