Goregaon Sports Club goes down fighting to CCI in Ullal; Wins the Motiram Cup

by Suman Gurpta

Mumbai : The NSCI courts were lit up with cheers of teammates and supporters rooting for their favourite teams as CCI rallied hard to squash Goregaon Sports Club’s (GSC) ambitions of a triple title and secure a 2-1 victory to clinch the Ullal Cup at the finals of the Motiram Club (for men), Ullal Cup (women) and Kanji Memorial Cup (for juniors) Inter-Club badminton tournament, organised by Badminton Gurukul and hosted by NSCI at their new badminton courts. Meanwhile, CCI ‘B’ did not stand a chance in Men’s Category as Goregaon Sports Club bullied their way to a 2-0 victory over CCI ‘B’  and avenge their Ullal cup loss to Clinch the Motiram Cup title and take home Men’s and Juniors trophy.  It was great to see the likes of Mr Sonjoy Chatterjee, chairman and co-chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs present at the occasion to support the initiative.

In the Ullal Cup, GSC made a winning start as the pair of Arya Shetty and Anamika Singh did not face many challenges from Aanchal Vaswani and Rima Jain of CCI defeating them 21-4, 21-15 to take a 1-0 lead. The 2nd game between Riya Arolkar of CCI and Aalisha Naik of GSC was the most exciting encounter of the finals. Aalisha who has been a consistent performer for her team was going head to head with Riya with both denying each other any room to race away with the game. After being so close for the majority of the match, Aalisha pulled off some brilliant shots to score back to back points and race away to a 21-18 victory. After the first game setback, Riya Arolkar bounced back and kept her nerves in the crunch moments to restrict Aalisha from attacking and took the 2nd and 3rd games by a close 21-17, 21-18 margin to level the scores for CCI. In the third game, Riya Arolkar paired up with Vaishanvi Iyer to make short work of Aalisha Naik and Kanishka Mahajan defeating them 21-6, 21-6 to take the Ullal Cup Crown.

The Men’s team made up for the Ullal Cup loss by securing a dominating victory over the CCI ‘B’ team.  In the Men’s singles, Sushrut Karmarkar who was up against Yash Tiwari of CCI started the game with an aggressive approach picking up early points. Yash tried to make a comeback but Sushrut proved to be too strong as he ran through Yash to take the 1st game 21-11. Yash was the more dominant one in the second game but a few errors cost him as Sushrut played some brilliant shots to score back to back points and finish the game 21-11, 21-19 in straight games. Later, the pair of Akshat Shetty and Prasad Shetty came in and took down Yash Tiwari and Jaidev Menon of CCI ‘B’ 21-12, 21-12 to complete their 2-0 rout and lift the Motiram Cup title.

Ullal Cup –

CCI bt Goregaon Sports Club 2-1

Aanchal Vaswani & Rima Jain (CCI) lost to Arya Shetty & Anamika Singh (Goregaon) – 21-4, 21-15

Riya Arolkar (CCI) bt Aalisha Naik (Goregaon) – 18-21, 21-17, 21-18

Riya Arolkar & Vaishnavi Iyer (CCI) bt Aalisha Naik & Kanishka Mahajan (Goregaon) – 21-6, 21-6