Ng and Song triumph across age-groups at English Nationals
17 December 2024
Martha Ng won golds across two age categories at the age-grade English National Championships.
Ng won the U17 girls’ doubles title alongside Shraddha Gopalakrishnan having won the U15 title together a week earlier.
Also at the U15 Championships, Ng won the girls’ singles gold with a narrow 21-19 21-18 victory over Meghna Mahesh.
She then rounded out her weekend with victory in the mixed doubles final, as she and Yixiang Hou defeated Oliver Wu and Sawoni Talati 21-6 21-17 in the showpiece.
The victory was revenge for Hou, who had lost 21-17 21-16 to Wu in the open singles final only a couple of hours after the pair had combined to defeat Hubert Ceglinski and George Yuxiao Wang in the open doubles final.
At the U17 English National Championships, Ng and Gopalakrishnan beat out Mili Patel and Anna Stewart in the girls doubles final, triumphing 21-10 21-14.
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Also in Milton Keynes, James Song added to his growing collection with gold in the open doubles.
Already the U19 open singles and mixed doubles champion, Song partnered Lawrence Chen to gold in the U17 open doubles.
Song and Chen beat top seeds Jaxon Clarke and Samuel Pulikkottil 21-14 21-13 in the final to win gold.
The pair had entered the tournament unseeded before defeating second seed George Clare and Sajan Senthuran to reach the final.
Song was the top seed in the open singles but suffered a 21-19 21-14 defeat to Jayaditya Kumar in the last eight.
Kumar then lost out to eventual champion Aarav Sujith who beat Anish Nair in a thrilling final, winning 15-21 21-11 22-20.
Rajvi Parab stormed to the girls singles title with a 22-20 21-12 victory over Tin Wing Raye Wan in the final.
Wan did not leave Milton Keynes empty-handed as she and George Clare claimed mixed doubles gold with a straightforward 21-9 21-16 win over Samuel Pulikkottil and Anna Stewart.
In the U11 National Championships a week earlier in Nottingham, Francesca Lim claimed two golds as two other players claimed gold and silver each.
Sophia Chen lost out to Lim 15-9 15-12 in the girls singles final before the two combined to triumph 15-9 15-5 over Tanvi Dhilip Kumar and Tanvi Dusara in the girls doubles final.
Saicharan Kannan was on the losing side in the open singles final as he was beaten 15-12 15-6 by Ethan Wong before getting revenge as he and George Manoj came back from a game down to beat Wong and Sherman Cai 5-15 15-4 15-13.
Photo courtesy of BadmintonPhoto.