BWF Junior World Badminton C'ship: Unnati enters pre-quarterfinals, Anupama loses

Santander (Spain), Oct. 26: India's Unnati Hooda progressed to the women's singles pre-quarterfinals but top seed Anupama Upadhyay bowed out of the BWF Junior World Badminton Championships here on Wednesday.

The 14-year-old Unnati, ranked number five in the world junior rankings and the fifth seed in the tournament, defeated Italy's Gianna Stiglich 21-11 21-7.

Hooda, who became the youngest Indian to win a BWF Super 100 title after claiming the Odisha Open women's singles competition in January, will next take on Hina Akechi of Japan in the pre-quarterfinals.

World No. 3 Upadhyay, however, lost to China's Zhang Xin Ran 15-21 10-21. Zhang will next play South Korean Na Kyung Park, who knocked out India's Rakshita Sree Ramraj 21-13 21-13.

S Sankar Muthusamy Subramanian, the highest-ranked Indian men's singles player at world No. 4, recorded a convincing 21-4 21-5 win over Spain's Basilio Porto.

In the round of 16, Subramanian will meet Thailand's Nachakorn Pusri. Samarveer and Radhika Sharma's campaign in mixed doubles, though, ended after the pair lost to Japanese Seiya Inoue and Kokona Ishikawa 18-21 16-21.