ISLAND badminton star Mariana Agathangelou is set to win her first senior England cap this week.
The 20-year-old, who has 12 caps for the England junior team, has captained the squad three times, and has two caps for the England U24 team, has been selected to play in a series of matches against Germany, along with Olympic medallists Donna Kellogg and Anthony Clark.
At the weekend Agathangelou reached the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles at the Bulgaria Open, with her partner Dean George. The pair had a good win in the second round over Agathangelou’s ladies’ doubles partner Jillie Cooper and Watson Briggs – beating the third-seeded pair in straight sets 21-17, 21-18 – but were knocked out of the quarter-finals by Russian duo Vitaliy Durkin and Nina Vislova.
In the ladies’ doubles Agathangelou and Cooper cruised again to the quarter-finals, where they met Vislova and her partner Valeriya Sorokina. The Russian pair are regarded as some of the best doubles players in Europe, having won the European Junior doubles medal four years running, and Agathangelou and Cooper took one set from the duo but could not sustain their winning form.
