Dubai: Malaysia’s Mohammad Ashraf Azan scored the biggest upset on the second day of the Dubai Squash Cup when he defeated higher-ranked Abdullah Al Muzayen of Kuwait at the Nad Al Sheba (NAS) Sports Complex on Monday.
Playing against the gold medallist of the 2014 Incheon Asian Games, Azan took the first game 11-5 only to see his Kuwaiti opponent fight back 11-8. Showing signs of a leg injury, Al Muzayen battled along till the two split the next two games and send the fixture into a deciding fifth that Azan managed to win on extra points and advance to a quarter-final against Aamir Atlas Khan of Pakistan.
“His shots were just amazing,” Azan conceded.
“In the third and fourth games, he attacked me more on the inside of the corners. In the third game, I was leading 9-1 and suddenly the game changed. By then he got his feeling and I didn’t have mine. In the fifth set, we both fought for it, and luckily it ended up for me,” he added.
Farhan Mehboob of Pakistan was inches away from an upset against New Zealand’s Paul Coll as he led by two games and possessing a cushy lead in the third when his racket string broke, taking away with it the player’s focus. There was no looking back for the Kiwi from then on as Coll won the next two and sent to match into a deciding fifth that he went on to close out 11-5.
“It was tough and I think he [Mehboob] struggled with the tin change and ultimately it was my fitness that saw me through,” Coll said.
Egyptian qualifier Ahmad Effat Ashoush’s fine run finally came to an end when he was stopped by Pakistan’s Nasir Iqbal 3-1, while UAE-based Khawaja Adil Maqbool went down in straight games against Zahed Mohammad of Egypt, who will now play countryman and top seed Karim Abdul Jawad in the last eight stages of the competition.
Elsewhere, rankings predicted the outcome as Aamir Atlas Khan of Pakistan tamed upcoming countryman Tayyab Khan 3-1 and Chris Simpson of England became the lone survivor from Europe when he got the better of Hossam Nasser of Egypt 3-1.
