At the recently concluded Yonex Sunrise 46th Indian Masters National Badminton Championship 2024, held at Panchkula, members of our Gymkhana, the proud State veteran badminton champions did exceedingly well and have come back with a rich haul of medals, both Gold and Silver. Our Badminton Secretary, Gautam Ashra partnered Mahesh Aras, (who are the current Men’s Doubles State Champions in the +65 category) did well and got a bronze medal reaching the semi-finals in the National +65 Men’s Doubles losing to the ultimate winners, who were a pair from Punjab and Kerala. Gautam Ashra and Padmini Desai, (who are the current State champions in the +65 Mixed Doubles category) reached the finals of the +65 Mixed Doubles and received a Silver medal for being the runners-up. Our Gymkhana’s celebrated and formidable pair, Ayaz Bilawala and Shailesh Daga, (who have won the last 10 State veteran titles in the Men’s Doubles event in the +45 and +50 category and are last year’s National Champions in the Men’s Doubles +50 category), ran through their opposition in their half of the draw in the Men’s Doubles +55 category and beat the fancied second seeds V. Swaroop and Kamlakar Rane and the fourth seeds Manoj Arora and Ranjit Singh on their way to the final round. In the finals, they were up against last year’s winners, Lingeshwar Rao and S. Manan. However, in the match, as Shailesh Daga suffered a bout of severe cramps (mainly caused due to bad scheduling of the semi-finals and finals event) and they had to concede their matches, they came back with a Silver medal in Men’s Doubles +55 category.
Shailesh Daga in the Men’s Singles +55 category ran through his half of the draw and made mincemeat of his opponents, beating all of them in straight games. The final was a repeat of the State Veteran Championship between Murali Subramanian of Mumbai Suburban and Shailesh Daga, who came out a winner in 3 hard-fought games. Shailesh got a Gold and his first National Singles title in the +55 category.
Our Vice President, Naheed Divecha in the +50 Women’s category won the coveted Women’s +50 Singles defeating Sunita Singh Panwar from Haryana in straight games. This was Naheed’s first Singles National title. Naheed then marched on and played the Mixed Doubles +50 with her partner Kiran Makode from Nagpur and they beat the 2nd seeded pair in the quarter finals and then recorded a victory in straight sets against the top seeded Karnataka players, Prabhagaran Subbaiya and Jayshree Raghu. This was Naheed’s 3rd Mixed Doubles title at the Veteran Nationals with her previous wins in the year 2019 and 2023.
Bombay Gymkhana thus came back with a rich haul of seven medals.
The badminton veteran circuit has become very active in the State and National arena and our badminton stalwarts are able to perform and compete at the highest level and bring glory to the Gymkhana and we hope and pray that they continue to do so in the future and trounce their opposition with ease and grace – By Ayaz Bilawala.
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