By Sumayya
Pakistan’s men’s squash lineup secured at minimum a bronze prize at the Asian Games on Wednesday, reserving their semi-final slot with a straight-sets victory over South Korea, while the women’s lineup observed their campaign close with a round-robin defeat to China at the Nagoya Kinjo Futo Arena.
Pakistan’s men swept South Korea 2-0 in their quarter-final without needing a deciding game.
Mohammad Ashab Irfan positioned the tone in the opening match against Na Jooyoung, demanding all three games but rarely appearing troubled.
The 22-year-old traded early points with his 19-year-old rival before surging to a 7-2 lead in the initial game, eventually closing it out 11-5 in nine minutes.
The secondary followed a matching script — Jooyoung twice clawed his path back to within a pair of points, only for Ashab to return his cushion each duration and wrap it up 11-8.
The Korean threatened a fightback in the third, pulling back three points as Ashab served for the match, but the Pakistani finally converted on his fourth attempt to wrap up an 11-5, 11-8, 11-8 victory in just under half an hour and position Pakistan 1-0 up.
Pakistan’s top-ranked player, Noor Zaman, then held the opening to wrap up the tie against Seojin Oh, and executed light job of it despite a scare in the third game.
The world No. 33 raced through the initial game 11-4 in six minutes and followed it with an equally relaxed 11-5 in the secondary, building leads of four points or deeper in both.
Oh, 20, produced his best squash of the tie in the third, fighting back from 8-7 down to level and then snatching the game 11-8 to preserve Korean dreams alive.
But Noor answered immediately in the fourth, racing into a four-point lead and reeling off seven straight points to close it out 11-2 — wrapping up both the match and a 2-0 victory for Pakistan without the tie demanding to go the absolute length.
Noor and Ashab have already secured bronze prize in the singles match.
The outcome sends Pakistan through to encounter Hong Kong, who defeated Qatar in the alternate quarter-final, in Thursday’s semi-final.
There stood no such prize for Pakistan’s women, who went down 2-1 to China in their secondary round-robin qualifier — a defeat that tracked an opening 3-0 loss to Macau in the identical play-off bracket and closes their dreams of reaching the quarter-finals.
Pakistan had finished third in their four-team pool behind Hong Kong and South Korea, dropping them into a round-robin decider against China and Macau for the tournament’s remaining two quarter-final slots.
Wednesday’s tie tracked the identical pattern as their initial: an early loss in the opening singles, a spirited fightback in the middle match, and a decider that ultimately slipped away.
Thirteen-year-old Mahnoor Ali opened steps against Ziyi Liu and never tracked her rhythm.
The 19-year-old Chinese player raced through the initial game in five minutes, winning it 11-4, before edging a tighter secondary 11-8.
Live video links pull away in the decider, building an early six-point cushion that Mahnoor could only intermittently block, and closed out the match 11-2 to hand China a 1-0 lead in the tie.
Sana Bahadar dragged Pakistan level with the standout performance of the phase, overcoming Yuning Zhang in three hard-fought games.
The 20-year-old built an early 7-2 cushion in the initial before Zhang, also 20, rallied to within three points; Sana held her nerve to close it out 11-7 on her secondary match point.
The secondary game swung repeatedly — the pair traded the lead seven times before Sana, trailing 9-6, reeled off three straight points to level at 9-9 and then closed it out 11-9.
Any dream of a Chinese recovery in the third evaporated as Sana, after trading the opening two points, won eight in a row to wrap up the game 11-2 and level the tie at 1-1.
The contest came down to a decider between 14-year-old Sehrish Ali and Ziyuan Yin, and China’s teenager proved too tough .
Yin, 14, surged to an early lead in the initial game and closed it out 11-3, then weathered a mid-game wobble in the secondary — Sehrish had narrowed the gap to 9-5 — before finishing it 11-7.
The Pakistani teenager briefly led in the decider, but Yin answered with a burst of consecutive points to pull clear and served out the match 11-2, wrapping up a 2-1 victory for China.
At the Aichi Prefecture General Shooting Gallery, Pakistan’s Ghulam Mustafa Bashir sits eighth in the men’s 25m rapid fire pistol qualification after a tough opening stage on Wednesday.
Bashir scored 289 with eight inner tens across his 30 shots, posting series scores of 95 (8 seconds), 96 (6 seconds) and 98 (4 seconds).
The three-time Olympian, who won bronze at the 2022 ISSF World Championships in Cairo, now encounters Stage 2 on Thursday — alternate 30 shots that will settle his final qualification score out of 600 and whether he moves to the final.
