India\u2019s Ayush Shetty continued his fairy-tale run at the the Badminton Asia Championships in Ningbo with a stunning first-game deficit 10-21, 21-19, 21-17 victory over top ranked Kunlavut Vitidsarn of Thailand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former world junior bronze medalist will take on China\u2019s Shi Yuqi. The second seeded Yuqi, strolled to a 21-9, 21-13 win over Taiwanese veteran Chou Tien Chen in his semi-final tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ayush, the 20-year-old US Open champion is only the second Indian singles player to step into an Asian championships final. The world number 25 is also the first Indian men\u2019s singles player since H.S. Prannoy, who bowed out in the semi-finals in 2018, to earn a podium finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was 61-years ago when the last Indian player won the men\u2019s singles title through Dinesh Khanna in 1965. India, however have won the men\u2019s doubles through their hard-hitting pair of Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After struggling to cope with Kunlavut\u2019s attacking display and conceding the first game, Ayush came upped his tempo in the second game and raced to an 11-4 lead at the interval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite a spirited fightback that saw Kunlavut Vitidsarn save five game points, Ayush edged the second game to force a decider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The third game followed a similar script with Ayush Shetty once again taking control early to lead 11-7 at the break. He fended off another late charge from Kunlavut to seal the victory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In picking up his first win over the Olympic silver medalist in two meetings, Ayush is just one step away from a memorable title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has been a dream run of the Indian youngster, who stunned world No. 7 and reigning Asian Games Li Shifeng of China in the opening round. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He then defeated Chinese Taipei\u2019s Chi Yu Jen, ranked seven spots above him, in the next round before sending world number four Jonatan Christie of Indonesia out in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The women\u2019s singles final will be an All-England final repeat between the top two world ranked players \u2013 An Se-young of Korea and China\u2019s Wang Zhiyi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would be grudge match of sorts for Se-young who was denied a back-to-back All-England title by Zhiyi last month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Se-young is also looking win the title here to complete her collection of major titles. While she has won the Olympics, world championships as well as the Asian Games, she has not been able to win the Asian championships title. She had also missed last year’s tournament due to an injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two arch rivals booked their places in the final in contrasting styles. Zhiyi was forced to come back from an opening game loss, to beat Japan\u2019s Akane Yamaguchi 14-21, 21-9, 21-13 in a match that lasted almost an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In contrast, Se-young had taken just 36-minutes to romp past teammate Sim Yu-jin 21-14, 21-9 in her semi-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The top seeds in the mixed doubles are also out in the semi-finals. Third seeded Dechapol Puavaranukroh-Supissara Paewsampran of Thailand battled past the tops seeds Feng Yanzhe-Huang Dongping of China for 90-minutes before taking a hard-earned 21-19, 18-21, 22-20 victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEMI-FINAL RESULTS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Men\u2019s Singles: <\/strong>Ayush Shetty (Ind) bt Kunlavut Vitidsarn (Tha) 10-21, 21-19, 21-17; Shi Yuqi (Chn) bt Chou Tien Chen (Tpe) 21-9, 21-13 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Men’s doubles: <\/strong>Kim Won-ho-Seo Seung-jae (Kor) bt He Jiting-Ren Xiangyu (Chn) 21-13, 22-20; Kang Min-hyuk-Ki Dong-ju (Kor) bt Fajar Alfian-Muhammad Shohibul Fikri (Ina) 21-13, 14-21, 21-16<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s Singles: <\/strong>An Se-young (Kor) bt Sim Yu-jin (Kor) 21-14, 21-9; Wang Zhiyi (Chn) bt Akane Yamaguchi (Jpn) 14-21, 21-9, 21-13<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s Doubles:<\/strong> Li Yijing-Luo Xumin (Chn) bt Yuki Fukushima-Mayu Matsumoto (Jpn) 21-17, 21-17; Liu Shengshu-Tan Ning (Chn) bt Amalia Cahaya Pratiwi-Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti (Ina) 21-10, 21-12<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mixed Doubles: <\/strong>Kim Jae-hyeon-Jang Ha-jeong (Kor) bt Yuta Watanabe- Maya Taguichi (Jpn) 21-18, 21-11; Dechapol Puavaranukroh-Supissara Paewsampran (Tha) bt Feng Yanzhe-Huang Dongping (Chn) 21-19, 18-21, 22-20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India\u2019s Ayush Shetty continued his fairy-tale run at the the Badminton Asia Championships in Ningbo with a stunning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-11541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-badminton"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty.jpg",2213,1243,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-768x431.jpg",640,359,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-1024x575.jpg",640,359,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-1536x863.jpg",1536,863,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-2048x1150.jpg",2048,1150,true],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Newsbeat<\/a>","tag_info":"Newsbeat","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Ayush-Shetty.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11541"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11551,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11541\/revisions\/11551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}