Tokyo Paralympics: Krishna Nagar gives India its second gold in badminton

India’s Krishna Nagar gave India its fifth gold at the Tokyo Paralympics. The shuttler picked up a hard-fought win over Hong Kong’s Chu Man Kai in the summit clash of the men’s singles (SH6) event on Sunday. This was India’s second gold in badminton.

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Earlier, Pramod Bhagat claimed a podium finish in the SL3 event yesterday. After a crushing win over Great Britain’s Krysten Coombs in the semi-final, he went into the final as the red hot favourite to win gold. Nagar lived up to the expectations and picked up a hard-fought 21-17, 16-21, 21-17 win.

Krishna started the first set with a bang but Chu Man Kai was always at a touching distance and even closed the mid-game interval holding a slender lead. At one point, he was ahead by 16-11 but Krishna made comeback to make it 15-17. From there on he took off and claimed six straight points to win the set. 

The second set also followed the same trajectory with Chu Man Kai taking an 11-7 lead at the mid-set break. He then went ahead at 17-13. However, this time he didn’t give Krishna a sniff and won the set 21-16. 

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In the decider set, Krishna came out all guns blazing and raced to a 5-1 lead. Chu Man Kai picked up a couple of points to close the gap but the Indian moved further away and was leading 11-7 at the mid-game break. Krishna was marching towards gold at 13-8 but Chu Man Kai came back to reach level at 13-13.

 The match was heading towards an interesting finish at 17-16 in favour of Krishna but the Indian stepped up his game and took a 20-16 lead. The Hong Kong shuttler won one more point but Krishna closed the match with the gold for India.