CITY’S Malvika Bansod caused a major upset winning her women’s singles match against a better ranked player to give Maharashtra a 2-1 lead over Karnataka who bounced back to claim the team quarter-final match 3-2 of the Yonex-Sunrise 75th Inter-State Inter-Zonal Badminton Championships 2022-23 that began at Pune on Wednesday.

It was one-all when Badminton Association of India’s 14th ranked Malvika took on Tanya Hemanth, who is ranked number two. Bother players looked good in the opening game but Nagpur’s southpaw Malvika pocketed the first game at 21-17. The Karnataka lass levelled it at

1-1 taking the close second game 21-19. In the decider, Malvika raised her level a few notches to dominate the final game winning it 21-15. The gruelling match lasted five minutes more than an hour. At the outset, city’s doubles specialist Ritika Thaker, partnering Deep Rambhiya lost her mixed doubles match to the pair of Sai Pratheek and Ashwini Bhat 14-21, 16-21 in straight games. In the following match, Maharashtra’s Subhankar Dey made it 1-1 getting the better of Saneeth DS 16-21, 18-21. Maharashtra then lost both the men’s and women’s doubles matches in straight games to go down. The players, along with city’s Simran Singhi and Nikkta Joseph will be seen in action in the 84th Senior National Badminton Championships that begins at the same venue from Friday.