SANTANDER: The Indian team beat Hong Kong 3-0 to finish 13th in the World Junior Mixed Team Badminton Championships 2022, here on Saturday. The first match of the tie was the women's singles and India's Rakshita Ramraj — picked ahead of Unnati Hooda and junior world No.3 Anupama Upadhyay — gave India the lead with a 21-10, 21-18 win over Chan Wing Lam.
Bharat Raghav then staged a remarkable comeback from a game down in the men's singles to beat Jason Gunawan 19-21, 21-19, 23-21 in an encounter that went on for 57 minutes.
The women's doubles pair of Isharani Baruah and Devika Sihag then confirmed India's 13th-place finish with a 21-16, 21-16 win over Chan Wing Lam and Liang Ka Wing. Canada finished in 11th place while Ukraine was 12th. Chinese Taipei and South Korea will compete for the title in the final.
India had finished second in Group B behind China and so it could only play for positions 9-16. They then lost to Malaysia to enter the 13-16 playoffs and then beat Germany to have a chance of finishing 13th or 14th. The Indian badminton team had finished 12th in the last edition in 2019. India's best showing at the BWF World Junior Mixed Team Championships was a fourth-place finish in the 2008 edition.
The individual BWF Junior World Championships 2022 will begin at the same venue on Monday. Agencies
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