Nagpur's Mugdha wins maiden seniors crown

NAGPUR: Mugdha Agrey completed a dream week by emerging women's singles champion in the All India Senior Ranking Badminton tournament, which concluded at Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, on Friday.
After knocking out several seeds en route to the final, Mugdha surprised third seed Sai Uttejitha Rao of Andhra Pradesh 21-15, 24-22 to clinch her maiden crown at the senior level. She took 38 minutes to emerge triumphant.
With this triumph, Mugdha became only the fourth city shuttler after Arundhati Pantawane, Vaishnavi Bhale and Rasika Raje to pocket the women's singles title in the Senior Ranking tournament.
With this win, 18-year-old city girl also avenged earlier three defeats against the Gopichand Academy trainee. Mugdha got off to a perfect start and won the first game quite easily at 21-15.
After winning the opener, Mugdha was confident and began to tighten her screws in the match to put her opponent on the backfoot.
However, more experienced Uttejitha staged a remarkable recovery and threatened to take the match into the decider. Uttejitha was leading 19-17 in the second game but Mugdha reeled off three consecutive points to regain the lead at 20-19. The AP shuttler not only saved a match point but took crucial lead at 22-21. Mugdha didn't panic and bounced back with a three-point burst to finish the match in straight games.
Mugdha, a first year arts student of LAD College, was esctatic after claiming her first major title.
“The feeling is amazing after winning my first senior national level title. I must say that it is the best day of my career so far,” Mugdha told TOI from Guntur.
She added, “Frankly speaking I did not expect to win because the field was strong and I had to clear top seed Shriyanshi Pardeshi in the pre-quarterfinal. I took it match by match and didn’t put myself under any kind of pressure. In the final also, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain so I played freely like any other match. In the second game I committed few unforced errors which helped my rival. But I am glad that I could finish it off in two games only,” said Mugdha, a trainee of Jibi Verghese.
Mugdha will now travel to Bangalore next week to play another domestic tournament.