Sri Lanka beat UAE in thrilling Group H match at World Junior Championships

Hosts India began their Suhandinata Cup mixed team campaign with a comfortable win over Nepal while Sri Lanka pulled off a late comeback against UAE. Other top nations also started strongly on day one of the BWF World Junior Championships 2025

Hyderabad: Hosts India kicked off their mixed team campaign for the Suhandinata Cup with a clinical victory over neighbours Nepal while Sri Lanka came from behind to beat UAE in a nerve-wracking Group H encounter on the opening day of the BWF World Junior Championships 2025 at the National Centre of Excellence in Guwahati on Monday.

India, seeded second, experimented with their line-up but still easily sailed through 45-18, 45-17 in their Group H opener while Sri Lanka took advantage of the changes made by UAE to win 30-45, 45-34, 45-44.

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All other top countries including 14-time champions China, former champions Indonesia and South Korea had little problem beating their respective opponents in two straight sets to get their campaign rolling.

The mixed team championships are being played under a new best of three relay-scoring format where all the five matches are played with a race to 9 points, and the team reaching 45 points first wins the set. Teams are also allowed to change their players for each set.

India took advantage of these substitution rules to give most of their players a chance to get some match experience as they played a different combination in all three doubles and different players in singles in the two sets against Nepal.

The former world junior no. 1 boys’ doubles pair of Bhargav Ram Arigela and Viswa Tej Gobburu set the ball rolling for India with a 9-3 win over Kabir KC and Suprim Panta and India never once looked in any kind of trouble.

In girls’ singles, Unnati Hooda and Asian U-19 championships bronze medallist Tanvi Sharma were clinical in their respective singles matches while Suryansh Rawat and Rounak Chouhan warmed up for bigger challenges without breaking any sweat.

“I tend to take my time with the warm-up in the 21-point game. But here we have to be at our best from the first point and so my warm-up included a lot more court time as we don’t get any time to warm up between matches,” Unnati said. “Otherwise, there was no problem as such in the match.”

None of the other top badminton-playing nations faced any challenge in their opening ties as China beat Ghana 45-14, 45-10, Korea beat Hungary 45-22, 45-29, Chinese Taipei defeated Brazil 45-24, 45-19 and Indonesia got the better of the Philippines 45-27, 45-40.

India will now take on Sri Lanka in their second group game on Tuesday and will play UAE on Wednesday.