National Badminton Championships: HS Prannoy stuns Kidambi Srikanth to win 1st title

Nagpur: Second seed HS Prannoy won his maiden Senior National Championship title beating top seed and World No 2 Kidami Srikanth in the final here on Wednesday. Prannoy defeated Srikanth 21-15, 16-21, 21-7 to win the title.

The shuttlers from Pullela Gopichand Academy brought their A game on court and entertained the crowd with some dazzling display of shots and edge-of-the-seats rallies.

In the first game, it was Srikanth who started aggressively to secure a 4-1 lead. But Prannoy came back strong and cut the lead by one point, before leveling the game at 9-9. Srikanth managed to pick up the next two points to move ahead to 11-10 at the halfway mark. After the interval, it was Prannoy upped his game and extended his lead to 19-13, before winning the first game 21-15.

In the second game, Prannoy kept the momentum going racing to 5-3 lead. Meanwhile, Srikanth continued to make errors, giving away easy points. However, the number one Indian shuttler rallied back to level the game at 8-8 after Prannoy hit the shuttle on the net.

As the second game approached the interval, Srikanth, just like in the first game, took 11-10 lead. After the break both the shuttlers played rallies and waited for other to make mistake. It was Prannoy who finally committed the error by sending the shuttle long to give Srikanth 14-13 lead. The World No 2 then extended the lead to wrap up the second game 21-16 and send the match into the deciding game.

In the third and final game, Prannoy changed gears as he raced to 5-1 lead. Prannoy was at his aggressive best and extended his lead to 11-3. There was no looking back from thereon as he wrapped up the third game 21-7 to seal his maiden National Badminton Championships title.

Srikanth fought well in the first two games, but in the end he failed to put up a fight in the deciding game, handing Prannoy a win.