Limited success for TN paddler Nithyashree

CHENNAI: It may not have been a great outing for the Indians at the recently-concluded Oman Junior and Cadet Open in Muscat, winning two silver and a bronze but some of the individual performances were praiseworthy as Tamil Nadu's Nithyashree Mani proved, putting up a good fight.
The Chennai girl beat Guo Yuhan in junior girls' singles event 11-8, 9-11, 12-10, 11-8, 8-11, 11-9 in the opening round, but failed to repeat it against Li Yuqi, a member of the Chinese national squad, at the quarterfinal stage of the cadet girls' singles competition as Li prevailed in five games 10-12, 11-5, 11-5, 11-8.
"I did not expect to beat Guo Yuhan, but I was glad that I could. I felt my blocking was good and I did well to receive my opponent's service," said Nithyashtree.
Later, she fell to Egypt's Farida Badawy in the quarterfinals, unable to sustain the pace and guile of the Egyptian who won 11-7, 11-5, 11-6, 4-11, 11-4.
Among the Indian teams, the junior girls' squad, organised on a group basis, Swatstika Ghosh and Varuni Jaiswal, the No.3 seeds, overcame the combination of the Czech Republic's Martina Novakova and Thailand's Jinnipa Sawettabut, having earlier in the day experienced a 3-0 defeat against the Chinese combination of Qian Tianyi, Guo Yuhan and Zhang Binyue.
Jinnipa Sawettabut accounted for Varuni Jaiswal (11-4, 7-11, 11-7, 9-11, 11-2) and Swastika Ghosh (11-8, 11-6, 11-2) but that was to be the sum total of her team's success; the doubles loss in the third match of the fixture proving crucial (11-9, 12-10, 12-10).