Pune: Joshna Chinappa won a record 17th national squash title after outplaying Tamil Nadu’s Sunayna Kuruvilla in the final. The top seeded Chinappa won the match 11-5, 11-4, 7-11, 11-5 and thus broke a 27-year-old record set by Bhuvneshwari Kumari, who had won 16 titles. Bhuvneshwari’s streak was between 1977 and 1992. Joshna, who is also a two-time Asian Games and Commonwealth Games medallist, was in control of her match from the beginning.
She led by two games before Sunayna rallied to take one back. However, despite the loss in the third, Joshna never really took her foot off the pedal and took the fourth 11-5 to win the title. In the men’s category, top seed Mahesh Mangaonkar lived up to his billing to emerge as the winner. In the final, Mangaonkar outplayed second-seeded Abhishek Pradhan 12-10, 11-7, 11-9 in an all-Maharashtra battle.
Meanwhile, Vikas Jangra of Rajasthan, Amitpal Kohli of Maharashtra, Saurabh Nayar of Chandigarh, Dalip Tripathi of West Bengal, Vivan Khubchand of Delhi, Dushyant Jamwal of Delhi, Vijay Jaini of Haryana and Rajiv Reddy of Tamil Nadu emerged winners in the other age group events.
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