NAGPUR: Star Nagpur shuttler Malvika Bansod defeated Denmark’s Irina Amalie Andersen in straight games, 21-13, 21-16, to qualify for the quarterfinals of the Hylo Open Super 300 badminton tournament in Saarbrucken, Germany on Thursday.
The 41 minutes that Malvika took to get the better of her Danish opponent saw the city shuttler playing aggressively in both games. While Malvika scored eight straight points to start the first game, she recorded seven unanswered points at the halfway mark of the second outing to take control of the proceedings before winning the women’s singles second round contest with relative ease.
Earlier in the opening round, Malvika outclassed Bulgaria’s Hristomira Popovska 21-6, 21-17. With her entry into the last eight stage, Malvika has made it to the quarterfinals of the BWF World Tour Hylo Open for the third time in as many years.
On her Hylo Open debut in 2022, Malvika surprised Scotland’s seasoned campaigner Kirsty Gilmour to reach the quarterfinal, where she went down fighting against Indonesia’s Gregoria Mariska Tunjung 17-21, 10-21. Last year, in the same event, Malvika made light work of Brazil’s Juliana Viana Vieira to enter the quarterfinal, where Gilmour avenged her 2022 defeat against the Nagpur shuttler.
In her third straight quarterfinal, Malvika will look to break the last eight jinx when she squares up against Vietnam’s fourth-seeded Nguyen Thuy Linh.
Rakshitha stuns Kirsty
Indian teenager Rakshitha Ramraj pulled off a remarkable victory, defeating World no. 25 Kirsty Gilmour in straight games 21-14, 21-12 to join Malvika in the quarterfinals. In the men’s singles event, Ayush Shetty and Satish Kumar Karunakaran also entered the last-eight rounds. Shetty cruised past Giovanni Toti of Italy 21-13, 21-9, while seventh seed Sathish Kumar defeated Harry Huang of England 21-12, 21-15.
