New Delhi: Sankar Muthusamy's dream run in the BWF World Junior Championships in Santander, Spain, came to an end on Sunday as he went down in the boy's singles summit clash to the Chinese Taipei's Kuo Kuan Lin.
The fourth-seeded Indian saved six match points in the second game but lost the final 14-21, 20-22. He became only the fourth Indian to win a silver medal in the competition.
Aparna Popat(1996), Saina Nehwal (2006) and Siril Verma (2015) are the other silver medallists from India with Saina bagging the only world junior crown for the country in 2008.
Knowing well that Sankar can play marathon matches, Kuo clearly had an aggressive strategy going into the final. But the Indian countered it well in the opening game to fight back from 6-10 down to make it 13-13.
However, Kuo used his deceptive strokes to keep his opponent on toes to clinch eight of the next nine points to draw first blood.
It looked like the Taipei shuttler would race to the crown after opening up a 20-14 lead. But Sankar fought back and the champion ended up making many errors to raise the Indian's hopes.
But Kuo found another gear at 20-20 to clinch the next two points with his big smashes and win the title.