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North East Warriors, the newest franchise in the Premier Badminton League, lost its opening game in the Premier Badminton League to the Hyderabad Hunters 5-2 on Saturday. It was a completely one-sided affair in all true sense with the North East Warriors winning just its trump match.
It was not a surprise to see the Hyderabad Hunters win the tie as they were the outright favourites to win it in the first place. The Hunters also gave the Warriors a scare in their trump game as BS Praneeth nearly beat W.T. Wei, the Warriors' marquee man.
BS Praneeth was in a good mood after the match and thought that they had a very good game right from the very first tie as M Kido and Y.Y Seong gave them a good start to the match by winning the Men's Doubles match.
“I played well and I am happy with my performance, I just gave Wei some silly points which was hard to overcome given the duration of one game. Otherwise as a team and individually I am very happy with the performance," BS Praneeth commented on the match.
“With a change in the training regime and the way our coach has been training us, the whole team is feeling good, and the team is more physically fitter. We have longer training seasons compared to the short training season we were having earlier.” Praneeth on the secret to his team successful performance.
Playing HS Pranoy the costliest player in PBL this season in the next game doesn’t have an effect on BS Praneeth who states that he is looking forward to the tie and they have been practising well and the Hunters are confident of beating the Ahmedabad Smash Masters like they beat the North East Warriors.
Ajay Jayaram admits that he is still recovering from injuries
Northeast Warriors Men's singles shuttler Ajay Jayaram said that having multiple injuries has been personally challenging for him, he did state that "I am still not a 100%, but I am getting there and I am happy with the progress I have made”
Speaking about the positives the Warriors would look to take from the game Ajay said that the speed of game they put up in the court was something that pleased him, plus everyone had given their best and with more practice, the team will only get better. He sounded happy on winning the trump game which was a bonus.
“Luckily all the foreign players understand English, so communication hasn’t been much of a problem” Ajay on the communication.
Ajay clarified that the reason he had a long chat with the referee during the game was that he felt there was a scoring issue when the scores were showing 5-8 he felt it should have been 6-8, and so he just wanted some clarifications on it nothing more.
