Lanky Harsheel Dani, of Mumbai Suburbs, and Pune’s Revati Devasthale have been top seeded in their respective men’s and women’s singles events in the Maharashtra Inter-district and State badminton championships, sponsored by Safal Group and hosted by Sports United at Chembur Gymkhana from tomorrow (Saturday). Harsheel is followed by Nashik’s Siddharth Thakur, Nigel D’Sa (Mumbai City) and Arjeet Bose (MS) in that order. The men’s singles have received 215 entries. Last year’s women’s singles champion Neha Pandit, of Pune, is seeded at No.4 behind top seeded her districtmate Revati, Mumbai Suburbs’ Riya Pillai and Pune’s Mudra Dhainje.
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. Neha 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.
In the Inter-District team championship, which preceeds the open events, the defending champions Mumbai Suburban in men and Pune in women will have to battle hard as this year the there will be mixed teams and the ties will be played on the new format of best-of-five basis with two singles and three doubles ties on the lines of Sudmirman Cup. 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 districts were unable to field women’s teams.”
CLOCK FOR SATURDAY
BADMINTON – 9 a.m. onwards – Team event; Maharashtra State Inter-district championships, Chembur Gymkhana.