The defending inter-district champions Mumbai Suburban in men and Pune in women will find it tough as the Safal Group sponsored Maharashtra Inter-district and State badminton championships, hosted by Sports United at Chembur Gymkhana gets underway from Saturday (August 29). The favourites will be fielding mixed teams, comprising both men and women players as the Maharashtra Badminton Association have decided to hold the event on the lines of Sudirman Cup from this year. Nineteen districts wil vie for the honours. The team event is expected to throw some interesting results.
The new format will be a best-of-five event, with men and women’s singles and doubles as well as mixed doubles to decide the tie. All these years the men and women’s had separate team events. Sunder Shetty,the MBA secretary said: “ The format for the inter-district team events has been changed in order to improve the quality of the paired events. Moreover, earlier some of the district were unable to field women’s teams.”
The seedings for the open events are:
Men’s singles (215): 1. Harshal Dani (MS); 2. Siddharth Thakur (NSK); 3. Nigel D’Sa (MC); 4. Arjeet Bose (MS).
Women’s singles (49): 1. Revati Devasthale (PN); 2. Riya Pillai (MS); 3. Mudra Dhainje (PN); 4. Nerha Pandit (PN).
Men’s doubles (93): 1. Nishal Dravid-PN/Abhishek S.Kulkarni –TH; 2. Vignesh Develkar/Eshan Naqvi (TH).
Women’s doubles (18): 1. Manasi Gadgil-PN/Vaishnavi Iyer –MC; 2. Gauri Mehere/Pallavi Gogate (AMR).
Mixed doubles (37): 1. Nishad Dravid/ Manasi Gadgil (PN); 2. Vignesh Devlekar-TH/Revati Devasthale –PN.
CLOCK FOR SATURDAY
BADMINTON – 9 a.m. onwards – Team event; Maharashtra State Intyer-district championships, Chembur Gymkhana.