Doha: Joshna Chinappa today registered one of the biggest upsets of the PSA World Tour
season as she stunned World No.1 Raneem El Welily of Egypt in the first round of the Qatar
Classic Squash Championship here.
The Indian national champion, ranked World No. 20, took just 37 minutes to outplay the top
seeded Egyptian 11-9 11-6 4-11 11-9.
File picture of Joshna Chinappa. AFPFile picture of Joshna Chinappa. AFP
However, it was curtains for Dipika Pallikal, seeded 13th, as she went down 5-11 7-11 7-11
in only 26 minutes to another Egyptian Yathreb Adel, who will now face Joshana in the
second round to the tournament.
Joshana, who had defeated World No.10 Annie Au in straight games at the Delaware
Investments US Open just two weeks ago, came into the second PSA World Series tournament
of the season in form and shot out of the blocks to establish an early two-game lead over
an out-of-sorts El Welily.
The 26-year-old from Alexandria's performance was littered with errors as she struggled to
find any consistency.
A costly error on 9-8 in the fourth game, when she was on course to level the match,
allowed Joshana back into the game and the 29-year-old Indian pounced, taking the next two
points, and the match, to record one of the biggest victories of her career.
"This is by far the best win of my career it doesn't get any better than beating the
player at the top of the world rankings," said Joshana.
"I've played Raneem many times before so to get out to a 2-0 lead was huge and really gave
me hope. With a player of her quality you can never be sure, she's World No.1 for a reason
and she can come back from any position even when not at her best, so I'm really happy to
come through. I've not been looking at my rankings or anything like that of late and I
think that's showing through in my game. I'm more relaxed on court and it's paying off at
the moment," she said.
"Hopefully I can keep my momentum going now and take that into my next match and see how
far I can go."
Saurav Ghosal is in the fray in the men's section and will play his first match tomorrow.
season as she stunned World No.1 Raneem El Welily of Egypt in the first round of the Qatar
Classic Squash Championship here.
The Indian national champion, ranked World No. 20, took just 37 minutes to outplay the top
seeded Egyptian 11-9 11-6 4-11 11-9.
File picture of Joshna Chinappa. AFPFile picture of Joshna Chinappa. AFP
However, it was curtains for Dipika Pallikal, seeded 13th, as she went down 5-11 7-11 7-11
in only 26 minutes to another Egyptian Yathreb Adel, who will now face Joshana in the
second round to the tournament.
Joshana, who had defeated World No.10 Annie Au in straight games at the Delaware
Investments US Open just two weeks ago, came into the second PSA World Series tournament
of the season in form and shot out of the blocks to establish an early two-game lead over
an out-of-sorts El Welily.
The 26-year-old from Alexandria's performance was littered with errors as she struggled to
find any consistency.
A costly error on 9-8 in the fourth game, when she was on course to level the match,
allowed Joshana back into the game and the 29-year-old Indian pounced, taking the next two
points, and the match, to record one of the biggest victories of her career.
"This is by far the best win of my career it doesn't get any better than beating the
player at the top of the world rankings," said Joshana.
"I've played Raneem many times before so to get out to a 2-0 lead was huge and really gave
me hope. With a player of her quality you can never be sure, she's World No.1 for a reason
and she can come back from any position even when not at her best, so I'm really happy to
come through. I've not been looking at my rankings or anything like that of late and I
think that's showing through in my game. I'm more relaxed on court and it's paying off at
the moment," she said.
"Hopefully I can keep my momentum going now and take that into my next match and see how
far I can go."
Saurav Ghosal is in the fray in the men's section and will play his first match tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment