Silver lining forRitika-Nitin

 

 

 

RITIKA Thaker and Nitin Kumar claimed their first medal in the very first tournament they played together, that too a silver medal to start with their partnership, at the All India Ranking Senior Tournament at Jwala Gutta stadium at Hyderabad on Thursday. After a dream run up to the final, the Nagpur-Delhi pair could not keep up the tempo in the summit clash against the top seeds Sathwik and Radhika. Ritika and Nitin had a good start in first half of the first game where the scores were reading 11-10 in favour of the top seeds. RitikaNitin then lost the plot and were defeated in straight games with the score reading 15-21, 10-21.

 

After the final, Ritika said that they were happy with the silver. “Happy with the silver! Somehow, we could not get our strokes in later part of the match which cost us dearly. A few mistakes and unforced errors made the difference. We will iron out the problems and practice harder for the coming tournaments. “I also take this opportunity to thank my parents, coach ArunVishnu for his untiring efforts and also Utkarsh Arora (Nitin’s coach who was by their side in the tourney) for his guidance,” said Ritika, who practices at Arundhati Arun Badminton Academy in Nagpur. MALVIKA LOSES INDIA’S second best women’s singles player, Nagpur’s Malvika Bansod went down to her nemesis Ratchanok Intanon in the Round of 16 on Court No 1 at Nimibutr Stadium, Bangkok on Thursday.

 

Malvika lost 21-12, 21-16 in the 44 minutes duel. Though Malvika looked a much improved player in the second game, she could not breach her opponent’s defence. As compared to 84 points won by the local Thai girl, Malvika scored 51 points in the two games. This was Malvika’s third loss in three years against the better ranked player. She lost to Ratchanok in Arctic Open (21-15, 21-8) in October 2024 in R16 and before that at Indonesia Masters (21-15, 21-13) in R32 in 2023.