SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad July 24: Shantanu Sharma of Saraikela and Manisha Rani Tirki of Ranchi won the men’s and women’s singles titles respectively of the Jharkhand state badminton championship which concluded at Dumka Indoor stadium on Sunday evening.
Shantanu became the new men’s champion of the state. He defeated Priyanshu Tirki of Gumla 23-21, 21-12 while Manisha Rani Tirki retained her singles title. She earned the highest point in round robin match and was declared the winner while Zeenat Arra of Ranchi had to contain with runners-up trophy.
Manisha wore triple crowns in the championship. Besides singles, she also won the double’s event title. Pairing with Ananya Singh of Ranchi she defeated the Ranchi pair of Amulya Anjela Lakra and Vandana Khalkho 15-4, 15-2 in the final. Earlier she had won the mixed doubles title pairing with Vinay Kumar Singh beating Safi Akram and Zeenat Arra pair.
Niraj Kesri and Yogita Bora of Ranchi bagged boys and girls under-19 singles titles respectively. Niraj Kesri defeated Rounak Negi of Jamshedpur 21-18, 21-14 while Yogita Bora beat top seed Vaibhavi Mann of Dhanbad in the final 17-21, 21-13, 21-13.
Vaibhavi had been runner up of for the last two years and this time she was considered a favourite for the under -19 title. Niraj Kesri wore double crowns also. Pairing with Harshit Raj he defeated pair of Kirtan Agrawal (Jamshedpur) and Liladhar Upadhyay 21-10, 21-15 in the final of boys doubles.
The pair of Sajan Kumar (Ranchi) and Shruti (Dhanbad) won the under-19 mixed doubles title beating the Dhanbad pair of Joy Chatterjee and Anamika Ghosh 12-15, 15-9, 15-9.
Mukesh Kumar and Vinay Kumar pair bagged the men’s doubles title defeating Akash Pandit ( Giridih) and Rameej Alam of West Singhbhum 21-17, 22-20 in the final.
Sports minister Hafizul Hassan was the chief guest in the closing ceremony and he gave away trophies to winners and runners up. On the occasion, Dumka DIG Sudarshan Mandal, DSP Vijay Kumar, District badminton association president Umashankar Choubey, secretary Dipak Kumar Jha and others were also present.
National panel referee Avinash Kumar (Ranchi), Alok Singh and Madhurendra Kumar (Maithon) were referee cum assessors of the championship while Madhusudan Murmu ( Dumka), Wasim Akram, Wahid Ansari were umpires and conducted the matches with new aspiring candidates of umpiring.
