Tokyo. Indian shuttlers Suhas Yathiraj and Tarun Dhillon continued their stellar performances to qualify for the semi-finals of the Tokyo Paralympics badminton event by winning their second group match here on Friday. In SL3, Manoj Sarkar also made it to the semi-finals after winning his second and final group stage match. World No. 3 Suhas beat Indonesia’s Harry Susanto 21-6 21-12 in 19 minutes in Group A in SL4 class while second seed Tarun beat Korea’s Shin Kyung Hwan 21- in Group B match of SL4. 18 15-21 21-17.
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Sahus will now face top seed Lucas Mazur of France in the day while Tarun will take on Freddy Setiawan of Indonesia. After registering two wins out of three in their group, Suhas and Tarun qualified for the semi-finals and may take on each other in the knockout stage. In the SL3 class, Manoj made it to the knockout stage with a 21-16 21-9 victory over Ukraine’s Oleksandr Chirkov. He finished second in Group A behind world number one Pramod Bhagat. Manoj, 31, who was suffering from polio, had to face defeat against Bhagat in his opening match. Earlier, the pair of Palak Kohli (19) and Parul Parmar (48) suffered a second consecutive defeat in Group A of the SL3-SU5 women’s doubles. The Indian pair went down 12-21 20-22 to French pair of Lenag Morin and Faustin Noel. On the other hand, Suhas did not sweat a bit in his match while Tarun had to struggle hard to beat his opponent. Bhagat has already qualified for the semi-finals in the SL3 class.
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