GUWAHATI: Assam bagged the first gold medal of the 37th National Games when their women’s badminton team blanked Maharashtra 3-0 in the finals on Saturday (October 21) at the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee stadium in Goa’s Panaji.
Assam’s Ashmita Chaliha and Isharani Baruah proved too good for the entire Maharashtra team as they won their respective singles matches and then teamed up to upset former junior national champions Ritika Thaker and Simran Singhi to wrap up the gold medal.
Ashmita, who was also part of India’s Asian Games contingent, began Assam’s march towards the top of the podium with a convincing 21-16, 21-11 victory over Purva Barve.
Maharashtra knew that they would be favourites for the gold medal if they could win one of the first three rubbers and those hopes would have been raised when Aalisha Naik bagged the first game against Isharani dropping just nine points.
However, Isharani came back stronger in the second game not allowing her opponent to play the deceptive drops and began controlling the rallies better.
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She sailed through the second game and opened up a 11-2 lead in the third before Aalisha found a way to score some points.
It was, however, too little too late for the Mumbai girl as Isharani kept her nerves to clinch the match 9-21, 21-13, 21-18 in 40 minutes.
The eventual silver medallists would have still believed that they could turn things around.
But Ashmita and Isharani rode on the momentum and took early leads in both the games and their opponents’ efforts were not enough to catch up with them.
The Assam duo won 21-19, 21-13 as the team rushed to celebrate a well-deserved triumph.