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Good show by Rohan Castelino

CHENNAI NOV. 6. India's number one junior player Rohan Castelino, who had an outstanding outing in the recent World Junior badminton championship held in Pretoria (South Africa), is the first male player from the country to have reached the quarterfinal round of this premier event.

The refreshing show by the young Indian mirrored the overall show of the country. India, which had recorded wins over Czech Republic (4-1), South Africa 3-0, Sweden 3-1 and Denmark 3-2, lost only to China (0-5) to finish ninth, compared to the 13th position last time, according to Sanjeev Sachdeva, the Indian coach.

The Chennai-based Sachdeva felt that, apart from Castelino, good performances had come from Anand Pawar and Krishna Deka Raja. He said Castelino had in him to advance further. "He had made an amazing comeback from 7-14 down in the second game to draw parity.

The Singaporean opponent, fifth-seeded Lee Yen Hui Kendrick had looked tired by this time and had the Indian won that game and pushed the contest to the decider the tale could have been different. All Castelino needed to do was play safe and allow his opponent to make the mistakes. Instead he failed at the net to give away three points and thereby the match," Sachdeva said about that exciting match, which the Singaporean won 15-7, 17-14.

He said the eighteen-year-old Karnataka boy — a trainee at the Prakash-BPL Academy — by his performances — beating Wai Hong Wong (Hong Kong) in the second round after a bye in the first and then getting past Russian Grigori Orlov next before downing the third-seeded Indonesian Simon Santoso for a quarterfinal berth — had proved he was ready for tougher assignments.

Sachdeva said equally impressive was Anand Pawar, son of the former India players, Uday Pawar and Sujatha. The 15 year old, who was the youngest member of the Indian team, had a creditable win over Chinese number four, Lu Yi before succumbing to another Chinese, Xin Xie, who is seeded five.

Another Indian, Nishad Dravid also reached the third round before losing to a seeded Chinese, Chen Jin, the ultimate winner of the championship. National junior champion Borah Bahniman beat a Korean (seeded ten), Kim Dae Sung in the second round before going down to Fang Yao Ting of Chinese Taipeh next.

Among the girls, Aditi Mutatkar reached the third round before losing to sixth seed Korean, Seo Yoon Hee. Dhanya Nair did not go beyond second round while Aparna Balan lost in the first round itself.

Also to reach the third round was junior champion Krishna Deka Raja, who beat Benesova Martina (Czech) in the first round, defeated Emilie Lenartsson (Sweden) in the second round before going down to the seeded Indonesian Salakjit Polsana.

In the doubles, two pairs — Borah Bahniman-Nishad Dravid and Krishna Deka Raja-Aditi Mutatkar — reached the third round where Rohan Castelino-Anand Pawar and Dhanya Nair-Aparna Balan crashed out in the second round.

In all, 23 countries took part in the championship. China, Korea and Indonesia retained the top three places.

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