Young shuttler Samiya Imad Farooqui on Sunday (Oct 8) bagged the gold medal at the Under-15 women's singles competition at the Asian Junior Championship.
The 14-year-old defeated Indonesia's Widjaja Stephani 15-21, 21-17, 21-19 in a match that lasted 56 minutes
The third-seeded Indian was fighting it out with the unseeded Stephani, also 14 years of age. Though it was a predictable match, Stephani put up a tough fight to Farooqui in the first game, collecting bigger points and beating her. However, the Indian later rose to totally dominate the last two games and won it. She was in the lead throughout, but the Indonesian girl wasn’t an easy competitor.
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Another Sindhu In The Making?
Farooqui trains at the Pullela Gopichand Academy where ace shuttler P V Sindhu also gets her strategies from. Sindhu had also won the gold at the U-19 Asia Junior championship in 2012 in Gimcheon, South Korea.
In Sunday's match, Farooqui played stronger in the second game and held a 11-8 lead at the break, before Stephani levelled the scores at 13-13. It was neck and neck for a few points from there before Farooqui took the game 21-17.
The Badminton Association of India reported that after the match, Farooqui said, “I was nervous in the first game but regained confidence after some motivation from my coach and gave my opponent a tough fight.”
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She added, “It was a tough match and went down to the wire. But I held on to my nerves and won it. I am very proud to win a gold for my country.”
With this win, India collected its fourth medal at the tournament and it was the only gold. The three bronze medals were earned by Aashi Rawat (U-15 women’s singles), Keyura Mopati and Kavipriya Selvam (U-17 women’s doubles), and Ayush Raj Gupta and Shubham Patel (U-15 men’s doubles).
Meanwhile, Farooqui was also India’s fourth gold medallist at the Badminton Asia Junior U-15 and U-17 Championships, after Siril Verma (2013 U-15 men’s singles), Chirag Shetty and MR Arjun (2013 U-17 men’s doubles), and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Krishna Prasad (2015 U-17 men’s doubles).
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Feature Image Credit: The Asian Age
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