Egypt’s Ali Farag, the second seed and also ranked two in the World showed his class with a fluent 12-10,11-4, 11-6 win over Saurav Ghosal to make it to the quarterfinal of the Qatar Classic, a PSA World tour platinum event in Doha late on Tuesday.
Even if the scoreline does not suggest, the Indian produced a good fight particularly in the first game where he in fact led 10-7 after being ahead right through. But Farag proved to be too good as the Egyptian took five points in a row for the game to leave Ghosal stunned.
From there Farag dictated terms and even though there were long rallies, Ghosal was unable to change the fortunes. In the third game, the Indian did impress when he saved two match points from 10-4 down but that was just a flicker of hope in what otherwise was a losing battle.
Ghosal, the 2018 Asian Games bronze medallist, was the only Indian in fray at the main draw of the tournament.