Qatar squash ace Abdulla al-Tamimi inched closer to a possible medal at the Asian Games with a 3-1 (14-12, 9-11, 11-5, 11-9) win over Japan’s Tsukue Ryunosuke at the GBK Squash Stadium here yesterday.
The victory gave the world number 28 a spot in the quarter-finals where he will take on Mohamed Nafizwan of Malaysia today.
Al-Tamimi, who won the Malaysian Open recently for his biggest success on the professional circuit, played two matches yesterday, having accounted for Mongolia’s Davaasuren Bat-Oktyyabri in straight games in the morning.
“Playing two matches in a day is always tough but that’s the way it is these days, you have to cope with it,” the 23-year-old al-Tamimi told Gulf Times.
“But despite that I feel very good about my game. My preparations were good. Winning the Malaysian Open gave me a lot of confidence but the Asian Games is a different ball game where everybody is motivated to win a medal for his country.”
Al-Tamimi added that his next match would be tough.
“My Malaysian opponent in the quarter-final is very experienced. However, I am confident and looking forward to the meeting.”
Ryunosuke, two years his junior, showed sparks of his potential but never could pin down al-Tamimi long enough to cause an upset.
The neck-and-neck first game raised hopes of a cracking contest as the Japanese held a slight advantage for the most part, capitalising on a few errors by al-Tamimi.
At one stage, he was 8-5 ahead but the Qatari caught up and held game ball at 10-9. A deft shot by Ryunosuke had al-Tamimi diving in vain, and with the scores level at 10-10 and later at 12-12 later, it looked like anybody’s game.
However, the Qatari came up with the big shots to nail it 14-12.
Ryunosuke raced to a 4-1 lead in the second game and stayed consistently ahead as al-Tamimi found the tin on numerous occasions to fall behind.
The game ended in the Japanese’s favour when at 9-9, al-Tamimi hit the tin twice in succession.
The Qatari then produced his best spell of the match by thoroughly dominating his rival and grabbing the third game conceding just five points in the process.
The fourth game was again a keen contest and it was evident that the player committing the least number of errors would emerge winner.
And al-Tamimi it was who excelled in that department as he closed out the match, which lasted 49 minutes.
Qatar could have had another player in the last eight, but Syed Amjad was beaten in straight games by Nafizwan, al-Tamimi’s last eight opponent.
Indian star Saurav Ghoshal is the top seed in the tournament. He accounted for Pakistan’s Tayyab Aslam in the last 16.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s beach volleyball duo of Cherif Samba and Ahmed Janko defeated Sri Lanka’s Asanka Lekamlage and Shashimal Hammilage 2-0 in a preliminary round clash.
They will clash with Kazakhstan’s Alexy Kuleshov and Alexander Babichev in the last 16 today.
In handball, Qatar take on Japan in their last match of the main round. They have already qualified for the semi-finals, having beaten Iraq and Saudi Arabia earlier.
In 3x3 basketball, Qatar will meet Jordan today in a Pool C game. In volleyball, they will take on Hong Kong.