Sindhu, Sameer top seeds for badminton Senior Nationals

TIL Desk Sports/ Rio silver medallist P.V.Sindhu and former national champion Sameer Verma were on Monday marked as the top seeds of the women and men’s singles, respectively, as the 83rd Senior National Badminton Championships 2018-19 gets underway here on Tuesday.

The top eight singles players will be placed directly in the pre-quarterfinals. Similarly, the top four teams in the doubles will start their campaign from the quarters. The BWF World Rankings as on January 18 is the major criterion for the seedings. All the top 50 shuttlers have got direct entries and the Badminton Association of India (BAI) rankings have been considered for players who have filled up the empty slots.

PSPB will be led by the top three seeds in men’s singles — 2015 champion Sameer Verma, 2014 winner Sai Praneeth and 2012 winner Parupalli Kashyap. Subhankar Dey of the Railways is the fourth seed, UP’s Ansal Yadav fifth seed, AAI’s Chirag Sen sixth seed, with Uttarakhand’s Bodhit Joshi and Haryana’s Kartik Jindal rounding off the men’s singles seedings.