The Hindu : Sport / Squash : Joshna in semifinals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 25, 2005

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Sport - Squash

Joshna in semifinals

CHENNAI: Joshna Chinappa had another fruitful day at the World junior women's squash championship at Herentals (Belgium) on Sunday when she set aside the challenge of Joey Chan of Hongkong in straight games 9-6, 9-7, 9-6 for a semifinal berth.

In her final year in the juniors, the Indian champion is keen to make it memorable and till date things have been going as per her calculations.

Joshna has not lost a game en route to the semifinals and against Joey too, she played to a plan and showed the resolve.

According to information reaching here, Joshna needed 40 minutes to beat Joey, winning most of her points through nicks.

"But the acid test is now,'' says Maj. (retd.) S. Maniam, the SRFI Consultant Coach from Malaysia, who had trained at the TNSRA-SDAT academy earlier.

Joshna is to face Saira Badra (Egypt) next. The Egyptian showed the grit to down the third seed and local favourite Charlie de Rycke (Belgium) in five games 9-7, 2-9, 0-9, 9-4, 9-2.

Maj. Maniam said that Saira can be a tough opponent, a level different from what she had faced till date.

Joshna had met her before and won too but "Saira's confidence must be high after the win over Charlie, in the latter's home ground. It can be tricky,'' he said. Considering the way she has been progressing, he felt confident that Joshna will come through.

Meanwhile another title-aspirant Tennise Swartz of South Africa scored a comfortable 9-2, 9-2, 9-3 win over Nihal Yehya of Egypt for a passage into the semifinals.

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