Ludhiana: City boy bags silver medal at national badminton tournament
A Nineteen-year-old Lakshay Sharma from Ludhiana has made the city proud by winning a silver medal in the men's singles open category at the All-India Senior Ranking Badminton Tournament held in Hyderabad from May 8-15. With over 768 players competing in the men's singles event, Lakshay's performance stood out as he battled his way through some of the country's top shuttlers.
In the opening round, Lakshay defeated Akhil Rao of Telangana in straight games with scores of 21-15 and 21-19. He then faced a tough challenge from Aditya Joshi of Uttarakhand in the second round but emerged victorious in three games: 21-12, 19-21, 21-17. Continuing his fine form, he beat Maharashtra's Varun Kapoor 21-12, 21-19 in the next match.
The quarterfinal saw Lakshay up against the third seed, Sanskar Saraswat of Rajasthan, whom he defeated convincingly 21-18, 21-15. In the semi-final, he pulled off another major win by beating the top seed, Saneet DS of Karnataka, with a scoreline of 21-19, 21-14.
The final was a nail-biting clash against Delhi's Ginpal. Despite a valiant effort, Lakshay narrowly lost in three games,19-21, 21-17, 20-22, and settled for the silver medal.
In September last year, he won a bronze medal at the Polish International Badminton Tournament in Lublin, Poland. Earlier in December 2023, he clinched a silver medal at the Kazakhstan International Series, which helped him improve his world ranking from 316 to 250.
A bachelor of arts programming student at Chandigarh University, Lakshay completed his schooling from Sacred Heart Convent School, Sarabha Nagar. Apart from his recent national-level achievement, Lakshay has been consistently performing over the years. He led the Indian junior badminton team as captain at the Asia Badminton Championship in Indonesia in 2023 and secured a bronze medal at the All India Junior Ranking Championship in Bengaluru in 2022. Representing Chandigarh University, he also won a gold medal at the Khelo India Games and had earlier taken the top podium spot at the U-19 Junior International Series in Hungary in 2021.
Lakshay credits his success to his father and coach, Mangat Rai Sharma, a national-level badminton coach with NIS certification.
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