Dubai: Nepal’s Prince Dahal emerged as the winner of the Boy’s Singles U15 title at the Dubai Junior International Series 2018. Indonesia’s Christian Agustinus Abas had no answers to the power and speed of the number one seed in the final.
UAE’s Vasantha Kumar Rajendran and Tanika Sequeira came up against Alex Green (England) and Nida Najeeb (UAE) in the Mixed Doubles U19 final. The evenly matched teams battled it out with the lead continuously changing hands until the winning point was scored by Green-Najeeb (21-19). In the second game, Green-Najeeb raced into an early 6-2 lead and increased the lead to 5 points at the interval (11-6), running away to win the game 21-11.
In the Girls’ Singles U15 category, India’s Manya Avlani stroked her way to the title with a straight games win over UAE’s Nidhi Desai 21-6 21-9.
There was an upset in the Girls’ Singles U19 finals as the number one seed from Algeria, Halla Bouksani went down in straight games to India’s Tanya Hemanth who ran away with the match in straight games 21-8, 21-11.
The Men’s Singles U19 finals saw the Number 2 seed, Varun Kapur of India take on the number four seed, Tom Soderstrom of Sweden. Kapur quickly raced to a 10-point lead leaving Soderstrom wondering what to do to counter Kapur’s exceptional control and deception. Unfortunately, he could find no answers in the second half of the first game as well as Kapur closed it out 21-7. The second game was closer with Tom finally coming into his own. However, Kapur still went into the break 11-8, a lead of 3 points. Soderstrom unleashed a few trade mark power smashes down the line to level the scores at 19-all but Kapur held on to claim victory with the next 2 points.
