Sport - Squash

Harinder swats his way into semifinals

CHENNAI: Displaying scant regard for seedings and reputations, Harinder Sandhu swatted his way into the semifinals of the ongoing Indian Challenger-PSA tournament here with another upset win, this time over fourth seed Dick Lau. Harinder had accounted for seventh seed Malaysian Muhd. Asyraf in the first round on Wednesday.

Agile and nifty, the 19-year-old needed just 26 minutes to dismantle Lau’s game with a surprisingly accurate implementation of textbook squash.

He began by running up comfortable leads in each of the three games and homed in on the vacant areas behind his opponent, perfectly illustrating the advice that wised-up coaches are known to propagate to their wards.

With two games in the red, Lau changed his strategy in the third by going for broke. The result, unfortunately for the Hong Kong player, was a spate of errors at a time he could ill-afford to lose a single point.

As a consequence, Harinder romped from 5-2 to 11-2 within a few minutes for an emphatic victory.

Harinder set up a semifinal match against second-seeded Ritwik Bhattacharya who was all business in a matter-of-fact win against Austrian floater Aqeel Rehman.

Continuing India’s decent show, top seed Saurav Ghosal outwitted fifth seed Max Lee in straight games. Saurav used the sidewalls to disorient his opponent and, in a recreation of his preferred tactics, upped his game in the latter half of every game.

The first game went point-for-point for each player and could have swung either way at 8-8. A couple of points and two long rallies later Saurav whipped one just above the tin and the ball died before Lee’s outstretched racquet could make contact to give the Indian his first gameball.

Lee saved one, but was foxed into an error on the second to lose the game. From there on, it was only a matter of formality for Saurav as he closed out the match in straight games.

The lone sore spot for India was Siddharth Suchde’s loss in four games to England’s Chris Simpson. Suchde managed to pull one back after losing the first two games, but ultimately went down to a player who was undeniably superior to him in all aspects. Simpson will take on Saurav in the other semifinal on Friday.

The results: Saurav Ghosal (Ind) bt Max Lee (HK) 11-9, 11-6, 11-7; Chris Simpson (Eng) bt Siddharth Suchde (Ind) 11-9, 11-3, 6-11, 11-2; Harinder Sandhu bt Dick Lau (HK) 11-5, 11-6, 11-2; Ritwik Bhattacharya (Ind) bt Aqeel Rehman (Aut) 11-8, 11-7, 11-4.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu