Barcelona: Young shuttler Mugdha Agrey emerged as the lone Indian survivor at the Barcelona Spain Masters badminton tournament, reaching the women’s singles quarterfinals with a hard-fought three-game win over USA’s Natalie Chi here Thursday.
On a day when the Indian trio of Sourabh Verma, Parupalli Kashyap and Ajay Jayaram suffered second round defeats, the 19-year-old from Nagpur shone bright with a thrilling 21-14, 13-21, 21-16 win over Natalie in the second round of the World Tour Super 300 tournament.
Sourabh failed to get across 22-year-old Ren Pengbo of China, going down 17-21, 13-21 in a 44-minute clash, while Kashyap went down fighting 12-21, 21-18, 15-21 to Kean Yew Loh of Singapore.
Mugdha, who had won the women’s title at the All India Senior Ranking tournament at Guntur in 2017, had to dig deep as she recovered from a mid-game slump to outdo her opponent in a 50-minute duel. The Nagpur shuttler will next play top seeded Chinese Han Yue.
The young men’s doubles pair of Krishna Prasad Garaga and Dhruv Kapila was also no match for the experienced Danish pair of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen, who won 21-17, 21-14 in the 38-minute match.
PTI
