Badminton: Tanvi Sharma,16, emulates Saina Nehwal with a silver at World Junior Championship

Tanvi Sharma, the precocious 16-year-old from Punjab, laid down the marker to be the next big thing in women’s badminton in India when she finished with a silver medal at the BWF World Junior Championships 2025 in Guwahati today. Her gutsy run at the Junior Worlds ended in the final when Thailand’s Anyapat Phichitpreechasak put it across her 15-7, 15-12.

 While she couldn’t replicate her awesome semi-final showing, Tanvi emulated the likes of Saina Nehwal and Aparna Popat who had finished with a silver in the prestigious event – a potential breeding ground of future champions. She is only the fifth Indian to do so along with Popat (1996), Nehwal (2006), Siril Verma (2015) and Sankar Muthuswamy (2022).

 Tanvi clearly struggled to find her rhythm in the opening game as she tried to win quick points but ended up making quite a few errors. Anyapat’s quick reading of her flat pushes and flick tosses also did not help the Indian’s cause with the Thai clinching seven straight points from 5-6 to take a sizeable lead and then closed the game in just nine minutes.

The Indian looked much more comfortable after the change of ends as she began serving short for the first time in the entire tournament and clinched six straight points after dropping the first. However, Anyapat was quick to change tactics as she then began engaging Tanvi in longer rallies and playing the patient game to induce errors from the Indian opponent. She managed to clinch seven straight points once again to open a four-point advantage at 12-8.

 “I was not comfortable. From the start of the match, I made a lot of mistakes. In the second game, I did manage to play my strokes but once again I ended up making mistakes after 8-5. After that, my coach told me to keep playing and I did that. But she was reading my strokes very well,” a disappointed Tanvi said after the match.

 In the boys’ singles final, China’s Liu Yang Ming Yu avenged his loss in the Asian Junior Championships earlier this year to beat top seed Mohd. Zaki Ubaidillah of Indonesia 15-10, 15-11 to clinch the title.