ISLAMABAD - M Farhan made a huge upset in the 12th DG Rangers (Sindh) National Squash Championship 2018, as he ousted former Asian senior individual squash champion Aamir Atlas Khan 3-1 in the first round at Sindh Rangers Jahangir Khan Squash Complex North Nazimabad, Karachi on Tuesday.
It was expected to be not more than a cake-walk for experienced Aamir, who although had started squash again after almost two years gap, yet keeping in mind Aamir’s experience and the amount of PSA titles he had won, it was being expected that he would win the match with utmost ease and comfort, but Farhan had other ideas in store for Aamir.
The first game started at a brisk pace as Aamir was finding it difficult to dictate terms while Farhan was simply pushing Aamir to run to all corners of the court. The plan worked wonders for Farhan as he clinched the first game 11-9. The second game proved to be one-sided affair, as Aamir was seemingly looking exhausted and a bit tired as he wasn’t moving freely, while he had a lot of issues while bending his back. Farhan took full advantage of the situation and simply outclassed Aamir to take the second game 11-3.
But Aamir was not in a mood to go down easily so he recovered well in the third game and started showing glimpses of his past game and pushing Farhan hard to take the game 11-4. After playing so well, Aamir simply ran out of gas in the fourth game as he was looking well short of match practice and was not be able to match fire with fire, while Farhan, on the other hand, was looking cool, calm and composed and was playing aggressively and putting pressure on Aamir. The moves helped Farhan well and he won the decisive game by 11-5, thus registered a memorable victory in just 23 minutes.
In other matches of the day, top seed Tayyab Aslam had to face stiff resistance at the hands of qualifier Mehran Javed before winning the encounter 3-0 in 24 minutes. Tayyab won the first game 11-7, second by 11-8 and third by 11-5 to emerge as match winner. Bilal Zakir overcame Sikander Khan 3-0 in just 16 minutes, winning the match by 11-5, 11-2 and 11-4. Noman Khan beat Haris Iqbal 3-2 in 26 minutes with the scores of 7-11, 11-9, 11-1, 9-11, 11-6.
Syed Ali Mujtaba Bukhari recorded an upset victory against former world junior team champion Abbas Shaukat as he won the match 3-0 in 31 minutes. The score for winner was 11-9, 11-8, 11-6. Abdul Malik beat M Naeem 3-2 in 41 minutes, winning the match by 14-12, 3-11, 11-3, 4-11 and 11-7. Saad Abdullah beat Naveed Rehman 3-1 in 40 minutes, winning 11-2, 11-5, 5-11 and 17-15, Waqar Mehboob beat Rafi Khan 3-0 in 17 minutes, winning 11-4, 11-8 and 11-6, Ahsan Ayaz beat Owais Rasheed 3-0 in 18 minutes, winning 11-5, 11-1 and 11-4, Israr Ahmed beat Raees Khan 3-0 in 29 minutes, winning 11-7, 11-8 and 11-9.
Salman Saleem beat Ch Nasir Anwar 3-0 in 22 minutes, winning 11-3, 11-3 and 11-2, Zahir Shah beat Junaid ur Rehman 3-0 in 23 minutes, winning 11-9, 11-4 and 11-7, Ammad Fareed beat Waqas Mehboob 3-2 in 43 minutes in arguably one of the best matches of the day, winning 13-11, 8-11, 5-11, 12-10 and 11-6, M Uzair Rasheed beat M Abdul Qadir 3-0 in 31 minutes, winning 11-8, 12-10 and 11-8, Zeeshan Zeb beat Uzair Shoukat 3-1 in 28 minutes, winning 11-2, 11-5, 9-11 and 11-7 and second seed Asim Khan beat Saddam UlHaq 3-2 in 52 minutes of highly top class squash on offer, winning 9-11, 11-5, 10-12, 11-3 and 11-5.
In the ladies matches, top seed Riffat Khan thrashed Hareem Ilyas 3-0 in 12 minutes, winning 11-0, 11-3 and 11-4, Nimra Aqeel beat Neha Kamal Khan 3-0 in 11 minutes, winning 11-1, 11-1 and 11-3, Ilas Imran beat Tehrima Islman 3-1 in 35 minutes, winning 11-5, 7-11, 11-8 and 11-9, Komal Khan beat Hira Aqeel 3-0 in 16 minutes, winning 11-6, 11-6 and 11-9, Noor ul Huda beat Sonia Salman 3-0 in 8 minutes, winning 11-2, 11-0 and 11-2, Noor ul Ain Ejaz beat Aina Aziz 3-0 in 9 minutes, winning 11-2, 11-0 and 11-1, Rushana Mehboob beat Maira Saleem 3-0 in 7 minutes, winning 11-0, 11-5 and 11-0.
Alisha Ibad got walk over against Zoya Khalid, Noureena Shams beat Soaliya Rasheed 3-1 in 20minutes, winning 11-4, 9-11, 11-6 and 11-1, Fehmina Asim beat Rubashia Iftikar 3-0 in 7 minutes, winning 11-0, 11-1 and 11-1, Zainab Khan beat Kainat Khan 3-0 in 14 minutes, winning 11-6, 11-5 and 11-7, Saima Shoukat beat Alina Zohra 3-0 in 9 minutes, winning 11-1, 11-4 and 11-2, Muqaddas Ashraf beat Maheen Masood 3-0 in 7 minutes, winning 11-3, 11-0 and 11-5, Aiman Shahbaz beat Aina Sheikh 3-0 in 10 minutes, winning 11-2, 11-4 and 11-4.
Meyral Shaikh beat Nabiha Imran 3-0 in 11 minutes, winning 11-6, 11-7 and 11-6, Anam Aziz beat Sibgha Arshad 3-0 in 16 minutes, winning 11-7, 11-2 and 11-6. Brigadier Abdul Ghaffar, Sector Commander Sachal Rangers was the chief guest at the inaugural ceremony and witnessed the matches for quite some time.