Read here how Lakshya Sen became the 5th Indian to reach the All England finals
The 20 year old Indian badminton player Lakshya Sen has beaten the defending champion Lee to enter the final of the championship
20-year-old Lakshya Sen has ended Lee Ziii Jia’s title defence in the men’s singles semi-final of All England Open 2022 to become the only the 5th Indian shutter to ever reach the final at such a prestigious Super 1000 tournament on Saturday.
The player from Almora has become the first Indian man to reach the final of the All England Championships in 21 years. Only 3 former Indian players have achieved this feat before. They are Prakash Nath (1947), Prakash Padukone (1980 and 1981) and Pulle Gopichand (2001). However, only Padukone and Gopichand have been able to go all the way and win the prestigious title for India in the past. Saina Nehwal also managed to reach the final in 2015 only to lose to Spanish star Carolina Marin.
On Saturday, Lakshya Sen needed to show his class and grit on the court and took an hour and 16 minutes in order to defeat Lee Zii Jia who was the defending champion, 21-13, 12-21, 21-19 in the men’s singles semi-final.
It was a very comfortable first game for Lakshya who looke like he was enjoying the encounter and managed to bag the first game quite easily. However, Lee started to put some real pressure on him in the second game and managed to level the match at 1-1 with a 21-12 second game victory pushing the game to the final set.
Lee managed to take early control of the decider as well but Lakshya did well to keep the Malaysian at bay. However, the defending champion started to dominate as he pushed through to a 16-12 lead, which could have proven to be the decider.
Lakshya however, stayed calm under pressure, which is proving to be his strategy nowadays, as he closed the gap out and managed to convert his 2nd match point to join an elite list of Indian shuttlers.
Lakshya Sen will be looking forward to becoming only the 3rd Indian to win the prestigious All England title as he will be getting the support of all the Indian crowd in Birmingham on Sunday.
Lakshya Sen will go forward in to the final with a good run of form with him and will hope to keep providing such upsets in important tournaments like these and bring laurels to his country in the future.
