Mumbai: Saksham Choudhary who making a comeback after six months of lay off defeated second seed Tushar Shahani 7-11, 11-8, 9-11, 12-10, 11-5, in the semi-final round of the Otters Club Vedanta Squash Open, at their glass-back squash courts here on Friday. Tushar started attacking from the onset and took the 1st game 11-7. Saksham bounced back but faced a lot of resistance before winning the game 11-8 to make it 1-1.
Saksham fought hard in the third set tiring Tushar by making him play longer rallies but Tushar prevailed to take the third game 11-9. With constant long rallies, Tushar was starting to lose steam and Saksham took the advantage to score back to back winners and race to an 8-0 lead but Tushar showed character push himself to the extreme and went on to score multiple winners to take the game to a 10-10 tiebreaker before Saksham managed to survive the scare winning the game 12-10 with the match tied at 2-2.
It was a game of fitness as Tushar just could not manage the intensity and succumbed to a 5-11 defeat in the final game helping Tushar win the tie 7-11, 11-8, 9-11, 12-10, 11-5. In another match, Top seed Veer Chotrani survived the first game scare before overcoming Neel Joshi 8-11, 11-3, 11-8, 13-11.
In the women’s category, Aishwarya made short work of Mithali Surana who was high on confidence after defeating the top seed Tanaya M Parakh in the quarterfinals yesterday. Aishwarya defeated Mithali 11-2, 11-3, 11-6 to make it to the summit clash. In another match, second seed Bhavana Goyal had no answers to Amira Singh’s attack and slumped to 2-11, 3-11, 6-11 defeat after a promising run in the tournament.
Results
Boys (U-19): Saksham Choudhary[3/4] bt Tushar Shahani [2] 7-11, 11-8, 9-11, 12-10, 11-5; Veer Chotrani [1] bt Neel Joshi 8-11, 11-3, 11-8, 13-11.
Girls (U19): Amira Singh [3/4] bt Bhavna Goyal [2] 11-4, 11-4, 11-7; Aishwarya Khubchandani [5/8] bt Mithali Surana 11-2, 11-3, 11-6