ISLAMABAD - Egyptian Omer Abdel Mequid and Zahed Mohamed reached final of the $25,000 12th Chief of the Naval Staff International Squash Championship 2016 here Friday.

Mequid, aided by some worst ever referring by Australian Russal Weatherdural, defeated Pakistan’s Farhan Mehboob in the first semifinal 3-1 in a hotly contested match.

It looked like it was not a squash match but a bullfight as Mequid used not only highly foul language and physically pushed Farhan but also he threatened match referee that he will take things into his own hands. On number of occasions, Mequid opened the court door and hit his racket to the ground but match referee Russal kept quiet as he didn’t say a single word to Omer and instead of giving conduct warning to Egyptian, he gave too many dubious calls against Farhan. Especially in the 4th game, it was a clear stroke to Farhan, rather Russal gave it let, which proved to be final nail in Farhan’s coffin. No one else but it is Pakistan Squash Federation, who is solely responsible for inviting referees like Fayyaz and other dubious characters, who are completely against local players. At one end federation claims they had limited budget so they can’t invite referees from far flung areas, but on the other hand, a referee is invited from Australia, the other part of the world. It’s amazing to see that the PSF is not opting for highly reputed referees on the WSF panel to keep the credibility of the events.

Farhan started the semi-final as highly underdog but he started the first game on a whirlwind fashion and completely dominated the lanky Mequid and won the first game 11-5 in just 7 minutes. But like witnessed so many times in the past, Farhan got relaxed in the second game and went down 2-5 early. He tried to pull the things together to make it 6-8, 7-9, 8-10 and then saved two game points before losing the second game 12-10 in 13 minutes. It was all Farhan in the third game dominating Mequid, who was looking highly frustrated, out of sorts and using his body to keep Farhan under check as he was not able to beat Farhan fairly. But referee kept a mum and allowed Mequid use every dirty trick in his pocket. Farhan was losing his cool and calm composure and was again and again requesting referee to stop Mequid from using highly questionable language and physically stopping Farhan’s path to the ball. Farhan must blame himself for not winning third game as he was leading 9-6, but he simply threw away the advantage and lost the game 12-14 in 10 minutes.

In the 4th game both players went on neck on neck as it was 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8, 9-9. Farhan had opportunity to win the game at 10-9 but he missed the golden chance. Then a highly dubious call at 10-11 in favour of Mequid signals the end of the road for Farhan and host country’s last hope of making it at least to the final also vanished.

The second semi-final was played between American Todd Harrity and Egyptian Zahed Mohamed. Harrity was in awesome form and took the first game 11-7 in 10 minutes. He was leading 9-6 in the second game before allowing Zahed too much respect, which costs him dearly as Zahed won the second game 13-11 in 15 minutes. Zahed went on to win the third game 11-8 in 10 minutes and 4th game 11-7 in 9 minutes to set up an all Egyptian final, which will be played at 3:00pm today. Living legend Jahangir Khan along with PSF senior vice president Air Vice Marshal (R) Syed Razi Nawab and others were also present on the occasion.