Badminton at Paralympics: Nitesh seals semifinal spot; Manasi, Manoj out

Paris, Aug 30 (PTI) India’s Nitesh Kumar dished out a superlative performance, thrashing China’s Yang Jianyuan in straight games in his second men’s singles SL3 group A match to qualify for the semifinals in para badminton competition at Paris Paralympics on Friday.

A 29-year-old IIT Mandi graduate, Nitesh, who had suffered a permanent damage to his leg due to an accident in 2009, outclassed Yang 21-5 21-11 in a dominating show.

With his second consecutive win, Nitesh is assured of a top-2 finish in the four-man group. The top two ranked players from each of the two groups qualify for the semifinals.

Nitesh, who hails from Karnal district in Haryana, will next face Thailand’s Bunsun Mongkhon in his last group A match.

Manasi Joshi and Manoj Sarkar, however, suffered their second successive defeats to end their hopes of making it to the semifinals from their respective groups.

Manasi, a 2019 World Champion, faltered at the finishing line to go down narrowly 21-10 15-21 21-23 to Ukraine’s Oksana Kozyna in her second women’s singles SL3 Group A match. She had lost her opening match to Indonesia’s Qonitah Ikhtiar Syakuroh on Thursday.

Tokyo bronze medallist Manoj also suffered yet another loss, this time going down 19-21 8-21 to Bunsun in his second Group A match. He had lost to compatriot Nitesh on Thursday and will meet Yang on Friday.

SL3 class is for those players with more severe lower limb disabilities, requiring play on a half-width court.

On Thursday night, Nitesh and Thulasimathi Murugesan had lost to Indonesian combination of Ramdani Hikmat and Oktila leani Ratri 15-21 8-21 in their second mixed doubles SL3-SU5 group stage match.

Suhas Yathiraj and Palak Kohli also suffered a 15-21 9-21 loss to France’s Lucas Mazur and Faustine Noel in their second group A mixed doubles match.

SU5 class includes athletes with upper limb impairments.