Rohan Gurbani, Maisnam Meiraba, Sathish Kumar, Keyura Mopati qualify for main draw in Ukraine

Rohan Gurbani celebrated his birthday in style by making it to the main draw in Ukraine on debut
Rohan Gurbani celebrated his birthday in style by making it to the main draw in Ukraine on debut

Rohan Gurbani, Maisnam Meiraba, K Sathish Kumar and Keyura Mopati qualified for the main draw at the Victor Ukraine International Series Badminton tournament in Kharkiv on Tuesday.

The four-day tournament is being organized by the Badminton Federation of Ukraine under the auspices of Badminton World Federation.

The teenage trio of Rohan Gurbani, Maisnam Meiraba and K Sathish Kumar notched up three victories in a day to make the cut for the 32-player men’s singles main draw.

Birthday boy Rohan Gurbani ousted Ukraine’s Valeriy Atrashchenkov 21-18, 21-19 in the third and final qualifying round to seal his berth in the main draw.

Rohan Gurbani celebrated his 19th birthday with triple wins in a day

Rohan, who turned 19 on Tuesday, defeated Andrei Don 21-12, 21-16 and Vladyslav Volnyanskiy 21-12, 21-11 in the earlier rounds.

Rohan, who joined Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad a couple of months ago, defeated all three Ukrainian opponents in the qualifying rounds. It was Rohan's first international overseas tournament in the senior section.

Former sub-junior national champion Rohan will lock horns with his Indian counterpart Anirudh Janardhanan in the first round.

Rohan’s former training partner at Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy, Maisnam Meiraba, continued his brilliant run to make the main draw.

Maisnam Meiraba qualifies for the main draw for the second tournament in a row

The winner of the Latvia Future Series a couple of weeks ago rallied back to beat Malaysia’s Kok Jing Hong 7-21, 21-14, 21-12 in the third and last round.

In-form Maisnam Meiraba qualified for the main draw with three wins in a day
In-form Maisnam Meiraba qualified for the main draw with three wins in a day

In the first two rounds on Tuesday, Meiraba thumped Hlib Derevianko of Ukraine 21-7, 21-5 and Andrej Antoska of Slovakia 21-14, 21-11 to make the main draw for the second time in succession.

Another teenager, Sathish Kumar Karunakaran, also stamped his authority in style to advance to the main draw. Tall and lanky Sathish Kumar will take on France’s Enogat Roy in the first round.

In the women’s singles, only Keyura Mopati moved up from the qualification. Keyura downed Ukraine’s Hanna Ivanova 21-11, 21-13 in the final qualifying round and will face Lucie Amiguet of Switzerland in the main draw first round.

Other Indians, including Sai Vishnu Pullela, Sai Charan Koya, Siddharth Gupta, Aman Farogh Sanjay, R Vikash Prabhu and Kavin Thangam, tried hard but failed to enter the main draw.

Seventeen-year-old Sai Vishnu, son of Pullela Gopichand, lost 11-21, 15-21 in the final qualifying round against Ong Ken Yon of Malaysia.

Sai Charan Koya failed to get past sixth seed Oleksandar Shmundyak of Ukraine.