17-yr-old Panchkula shuttler Anupama Upadhyaya brings laurels

Deepankar Sharda

Panchkula, November 6

Seventeen-year-old shuttler Anupama Upadhyaya won her first-ever senior ranking tournament, today. Anupama, who hails from Panchkula and studies at Bhavan Vidyalaya, Chandigarh, won the Yonex Sunrise All-India Senior Ranking Badminton Tournament at Visakhapatnam.

In the final, the ace shuttler defeated 6th seed Aditi Bhatt of Uttarakhand in straight games (21-8, 21-15). In the semi-final, she recorded a comeback win over Haryana’s Anmol Kharb. She logged a (13-21, 21-14, 21-10) win. In the quarterfinals, Anupama defeated top seed Tara Shah of Maharashtra (22-20, 21-19).

“I was confident of winning this event. This was my first major event after off-season training. I am happy with the outcome,” said Anupama.

In the first round, she defeated Punjab’s Tanvi Sharma (21-15, 21-17) and Rajasthan’s Shakshi Phogat (21-8, 21-12).

“I had a tough pre-quarterfinal. Likhita Srivastava was a tough opponent, but I managed to log a (17-21, 21-16, 21-9) victory. I take a rich experience from here and will try to overcome the mistakes committed here in future championships,” added Anupama.

Top-ranked junior player

Anupama is currently the top-ranked junior player as per the Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings with 18,160 points in 19 tournaments. In March last year, she held 65th rank after winning the 2022 Polish Open 2022. Later in January, she jumped 43 spots to grab the 84th rank in the same rankings. Earlier this year, she had won the Poland Challenge (Arlamow) and also reached the semi-finals of the Syed Modi India International Super 300 series. She won the Infosys Foundation International Challenge Tournament and had also played in the quarterfinals of the Orleans Open, a super 100 series tournament held in Orleans (France) and played semis in the Pune Junior International Grandprix. In this championship, she lost to eventual winner Saranuk Vitdsarn of Thailand.