Jayaram will take on the top seed and World No. 43 Pablo Abian in the title clash on Sunday. The Spaniard too had to work hard to earn a 14-21, 21-9, 21-16 win over the sixth seeded Sergey Sirant of Russia in the other semi-final.
The Indian men’s doubles pair of Tarun Kona and Saurabh Sharma, however, did not enjoy the same good fortunes. The duo, seeded second at this tournament, went down fighting 21-18, 13-21, 17-21 to the unseeded German combine of Bjarne Geiss and Jan Colin Völker.
This was the first final on the BWF circuit for the 30-year-old Jayaram since losing the final of the Dutch Open to Wang Tzu Wei in 2016. It has been a tough few months for the Mumbai shuttler.
Immediately after reaching his career-high ranking of 13th in June of last year, things started going downhill. A stubborn hamstring injury kept him out of action for a long time, robbing him the chance to build on his career-high ranking.
Jayaram couldn’t play a full season even this year. It was only in April that he made a full-fledged return to competition at the China Masters. He started showing flashes of his brilliance at the US Open last month, where he made it to the semi-finals.
The performance hauled his ranking from below the 100s to 96th. Jayaram would be hoping to gain more confidence and ranking points from this week’s White Nights International Challenge with a win over Pablo Abian in the final.
The Spaniard holds a 2-1 record over the Indian and they haven’t met in the last five years.
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