Newly-crowned junior world no. 1 Junior Lakshya Sen notched up a straight-game win over Mumbai's Harsheel Dani to storm into the finals of men's singles competition at the 81st Senior Badminton National Championship here on Monday.
The 15-year-old from Uttarakhand, playing his first Nationals, stunned Dani, who had reached the semifinals of the Syed Modi Grand Prix Gold last week at Lucknow, 21-12 21-13 in a lop-sided contest.
The reigning junior national champion from Almora will next take on former National champion Sourabh Verma, who knocked out defending champion and his younger brother Sameer 21-16 21-16 in just 23 minutes in another semifinal clash.
Sameer, seeded second, had defeated fifth seed Pratul Joshi 21-9 21-11, while Sourabh, third seed, had beaten Siril Varma 21-16 21-13 in quarterfinals to reach the semifinals earlier in the day.
In women's singles, Reshma karthik, ninth seed, thrashed Aakarshi Kashyap 21-10 21-12 to set up a summit clash with second seed Rituparna Das, who defeated former National Games gold medallist Arundhati Pantawane 21-11 21-10 in another match.
14th seed Arundhati had overcome a stiff resistance from Saili Rane 21-16 17-21 21-17 earlier in the day, while Rituparna had defeated 13th seed Rasika Raje 21-17 21-18.