Exciting Start to the New SSBU Badminton Season at Penicuik

The first event of the new SSBU badminton season took place at Penicuik Lesiure Centre on Saturday 25^th October. There was a healthy entry with 28 boys originally en tered for the singles although there were a few withdrawals prior to the event. All of the seeded players came safely through the pools with the first upset happening in the quarter finals of the A singles with Kavin Raman knocking out 2^nd seeded Atharv Sharma in a long 3 set match. Kavin continued his good form with a victory over Sumanth. Prakash in the semi. This match was only 2 games but a close score line of 21-19, 21-18.

In the other half of the draw top seed Divyam Goyal had a tough quarter final against Chris Agnew winning the match 21-19,21-19. Divyam then defeated Saathvik Saravanan in the semi final leaving him to take on Kavin in the final. The final lasted 44 minutes delaying the start of the boys doubles. Divyam won the first game 21-13 but Kavin proved he was on top form by taking the second game 21-19 and went on to win by taking the deciding game 21-18.

It was now 2 p.m. and Penicuik now closes at 4 p.m. at the weekend. Divyam and Kavin both had their pool matches in doubles to play before getting to the knock-out stage and the decision had to be taken that the boys doubles knock-outs could not  be played as 3 set matches. In fact even by playing just one game players and official were just leaving the hall at the 4 p.m. deadline. Again in the doubles the four seeded pairs reached the semi finals and the final was between Divyam & Arthav and Chris & Kavin. There was just enough time to play this match as best of three with Chris & Kavin taking the first game 21-19. Divyam was however determined not to lose twice and won the second game 21-15. Kavin however continued the good form and Chris was also determined not to lose to Divyam a second time and so Chris and Kavin took the title by winning the deciding game 21-14.

13 girls played in  the singles event and there were no upsets here with the four seeds reaching the semi-finals and the final was between the top 2 seeds Anvita Awashti and Sophia Gajri with Anvita winning 21-16, 21-18.

With 5 pairs in the girls doubles the event was played as one pool  and with pool games played as best of three sets. This meant that the girls games were still just finishing as the boys final came off court. The top 2 seeds played in the final match to decide the winners with Sophia Gajri and Giselle Lee defeating Anvita & Bhanu Duvvuri 16-21,21-7,21-19.

It was back to Penicuik on Sunday 26^th for the senior Inter Area. Only 3 areas entered so Lothian entered a second team to give a pool of four. In the first round of matches the 2 Lothian teams played each other and at first it seemed that the Lothian second team might beat the first. However it was not to be with Lothian 1 winning by 7 rubbers to 4. In the second round of matches Lothian 1 took on Lanark while Lothian 2 played against the Glasgow team. Despite a valiant effort the Glasgow team had an 8-3 victory. The Lanark team put in a good effort and there were quite a few close matches for them throughout the event but unfortunately they were unable to score a victory in any of the matches. In the final round of matches Glasgow got off to a good start winning the first 3 matches. The Lothian team never recovered giving Glasgow an 8-3 victory.

Image: Runners up Glasgow and Winners Lothian

SSBU have another busy weekend in 2 weeks time with the 2014 age group on Saturday and the Intermediate Inter Area on Sunday. These events will again be held at Penicuik