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World No. 9 Prannoy HS and former World No. 1 Kidambi Srikanth spearhead the line-up as Indian shuttlers get ready for 75th Inter State-Inter Zonal Badminton Championships and 84th Senior National Badminton Championships to be played at the Balewadi stadium in Pune from February 22 to 28.
The senior nationals was not held for the last two years due to the Covid pandemic and returns to a city that is widely considered as the birth place of shuttle badminton. "The popularity of the game is on an all-time high with the national team creating history by winning the Thomas Cup last year and then clinching India's first-ever Badminton Asia Mixed Team medal earlier this month. National championship provides a fantastic platform for upcoming players to challenge the established stars and unearth fresh talent," said Badminton Association of India secretary Sanjay Mishra. BAI has exponentially increased the prize money for the National championships since 2017 with a total prize purse of INR 40L for individual championships and INR 10L for the Inter State-Inter Zonal meet. The team championship will be played on February 22 and 23 with the individual event kicking off from February 24 onwards. Prannoy and Srikanth, who played an important role in India's Thomas Cup and Asian Mixed Team podium finish, will face a stiff challenge in their quest for glory from the likes of defending champion Sourabh Verma, former world championships bronze medallist B Sai Praneeth and Sameer Verma. The challenge of the young brigade is likely to be shouldered by the likes of Mithun Manjunath, Kiran George and Priyanshu Rajawat as a total of 479 entries have been registered for honours. The other stars set to vie for the coveted title include All England semi-finalist women's doubles combination of Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly, men's doubles specialists Chirag Shetty, Dhruv Kapila, Krishna Prasad and Vishnuvardhan Goud. The men's and women's singles champions will take home a prize purse of INR 3.25L each with the doubles champions getting richer by INR 3.45L. The winning team in the Inter State-Inter Zonal meet will earn INR 5L as prize money. --IANS cs ( 369 Words) 2023-02-21-20:44:02 (IANS)
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