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Sai Praneeth and Ruthvika Shivani have won the Air Costa 79th Senior National Badminton Championships held in Vijaywada on Thursday.
Sai defeated Sameer Verma, 19-21, 21-15, 22-20 in a thrilling contest. On the other hand, Ruthvika outclassed her training partner Rituparna Das 21-13, 21-13.
Another upset took place in the women’s doubles event. Siki Reddy and Pradnya Gadre, the duo had earlier defeated Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa and won the event by defeating Prajakta Sawant and Aparna Balan, 21-12, 16-21, 21-18 in the final.
However, Aparna did managed to secure the mixed doubles title, along with team-mate Arun Vishnu, 21-16, 11-21, 21-15 against Siki and Kona. Manu Attri and Sumeeth Reddy won the Men’s doubles title, 17-21, 21-13, 21-17 over Akshay Dewalkar and Pranaav Chopra.
Sai Praneeth’s biggest claim to fame so far has been defeating legendary shuttler Taufik Hidayat in his last professional match. Sai had previously lost to Sameer’s brother Saurabh in the 2012 edition. However, this time Sai held his nerve in a edge of the seat encounter to win the tournament.
