(Image courtesy of the Professional Squash Association)
By Howard Harding
Mohamed Elshorbagy collected his second PSA World Tour title in eight days – and established a career-best 10-match winning streak – when he upset top-seeded Egyptian compatriot Karim Darwish in the final of the Banque Misr Sky Open, the PSA International 50 squash event at the Sky Resort in New Cairo, Egypt.
Ranked six in the world, Elshorbagy is enjoying the form of his life: Last week in Doha, the 22-year-old from Alexandria captured his first PSA World Series title at the Qatar Classic – again defying the world rankings by beating world No 5 Darwish en-route to the final.
Elshorbagy went into the final 3-9 down to Darwish on a career head-to-head tally over the past four years – but had only dropped a single game in his three wins over the former world No 1 from Cairo.
And the young pretender clearly took full advantage of Darwish’s demanding route to the final, which had included two five-game marathons in which the 32-year-old had had to recover from two games down.
Darwish had no answer to the youngster’s pressure as Elshorbagy romped to an 11-2, 11-7, 11-8 victory in 43 minutes to win the seventh Tour title of his career.
“I had to be very focused from the very first point today as I knew if this gets very tough I could be in trouble mentally as I could feel last night I was tired mentally,” Elshorbagy told www.squashsite.com later.
“After winning the first game I knew he would give it a big push in the second as we both know there was no way today he could come back from 2/0 down as physically it would have been close to impossible after the amount of hard matches he had.
“So after the few long rallies we had in the second I knew that was good for me and I started going short more at the end of the second and I could feel he was struggling to move there because I could feel he was tired.
“I am just very happy I could back up after Qatar and the worlds.”
