Qatar outplayed Gulf neighbours UAE 27-15 for their second straight win in their Group C preliminaries at the Seonhak Handball Gymnasium yesterday.

After Saturday’s convincing victory over Oman, Asian champions Qatar virtually enjoyed a stroll in the park with Abdulrazzaq Murad single-handedly demolishing the opposition by scoring a whopping eight goals.

The win put Qatar in the main round but before that they will get to test their skills today when they take on mighty China, the silver medallists in 2010, in their last preliminary.

Left-winger Murad was in dazzling form as he found the net four times in each half, ducking and weaving past the hapless UAE defence with effortless ease.

Rafael Capote and Mahnoud Hasballa gave him able support with three goals as Qatar led 15-7 at half-time.

For the UAE, Mohamed al-Balooshi  top-scored with six goals.

“Two win in two days, I have no complaints,” said Qatar coach Alvaro Rivera. “Tomorrow will be interesting when we take on China.”

Before UAE could realise what was happening, Qatar had raced to a 6-0 lead in the first six minutes and that was pretty much the end of the match.

“We cannot be complacent as there are several important matches ahead,” said Rivera, a World Championship-winning coach with Spain.

Qatar are expecting a podium finish this time after finishing fifth in Guangzhou, but Rivera was focused on the current job on hand. “Of course every team is here to win  the tournament, but we must take one day at a time,” said the Spaniard.

Meanwhile, China suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Oman, losing 27-22. The gold medallists will be decided on October 2.

There was further good news for Qatar when they blanked Bangladesh in beach volleyball with the duo of Tiago Santos and Santos Perreira virtually steamrolling Monir Hussain and Horosit Biswas 21-12, 21-10.

However, there was some bad news in squash where Qatar’s Abdulla al-Tamimi went down to Hong Kong’s Lee Ho Yin in five games to crash out.

Lee won the marathon quarterfinal match 11-4, 11-5, 9-11, 8-11, 11-2 to progress, but al-Tamimi learned a tough lesson about competing at this level that would serve him well in the future.

“I had my chance after I fought back from two games down, but in the decider I let myself down,” he said.

Al-Tamimi had beaten Kuwait’s Ammar al-Tamimi on Saturday in five sets, but denied tiredness had anything to do with his defeat.

“I am used to long matches, but Lee proved too good in the final set,” he said.

Qatar’s ace shooter Rashid al-Athba also bowed out of the men’s trap event, failing to get past the qualifiers after finishing in ninth place with a score of 118 out of 125.

China’s Bo Gao later went on to win the gold with Kuwait’s Fehaid al-Dheehani clinching silver and Kazakhstan’s Andrey Mogilevskiy taking bronze.

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