S V Rangarao memorial badminton tournament 2020 held in Christchurch

The Telugu Badminton Club of Canterbury held their S V Ranga Rao Memorial Badminton Tournament on July 19. The community sports event was sponsored by Designer Homes, and co-sponsored by Dhaval Lamghare of Harcourts and Indian Paradise.

This year the tournament had 48 players from diverse ethnic backgrounds, including India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Japan. The tournament was divided into rounds with four groups made up of 24 pairs. The top eight pairs with the highest points were put into A grade, the next eight into B grade and the remaining eight into C grade.

The winners from A grade category were Ajesh Jose and Martin Thomas, while A grade runners-up were Shane Andrew Dominic and Renchu George. Winners from B category were Anand Sathish Kumar and Ashil Joy while runners-up were Dinesh Kumar and Raam Kumar. The C grade category winners were Abhilash Suja, Anand Gopakumar while runners-up were Sandesh Chandra and Vignesh Makkada.

The highlight of the prize distribution was all the players who participated in the tournament having a chance to win a Yonex badminton racquet. The lucky person to win this was Jewel.

The prize giving distribution was carried out by guests Sirish Paranjape (Community Board member of Fendalton and Waimari), Uma Varma (Director of Revathi Performing Arts) and Venkat Pulakanam (MBA Programme Director at University of Canterbury).

While distributing prizes to A grade winners, Sirish shared his memories of attending the tournament as chief guest from 2017 and said how it was great to see a difference in increase in players participating this year, with the number of teams being doubled now.

Uma thanked TBCC for the opportunity that it was providing the community with by being a social sports club.

Venkat mentioned that when he started to play badminton here, there was no club like TBCC that encouraged regular games and organized tournaments for its players and how nice it is now to see TBCC create a space for players like that. He offered several useful tips to players on how they can improve their game from being a mid-range player to being a performance level player.

Tournament organizer Rajeswar Peddisetti shared a few words on how great it is to see the tournament be not only a sporting event, but more so a community gathering and hopes to hold more tournaments like this in future. He said this event would not have been possible without the help from dedicated volunteers from the community. The event ended with lunch for all attendees, sponsored by Indian Paradise.

- by Telugu Badminton Club of Canterbury