Bounty squash
Badrinauth continues to shine
Stabroek News
February 14, 2004
Shawn Badrinauth continued his winning ways on Thursday evening at the Georgetown Club, disposing of Stanley Marcus Jr. in a third-round fixture of the Bounty Farm Ltd-sponsored Mashramani Handicap Squash Tournament.
And in what can be termed an upset, ten-year-old Nicholas Narain edged his senior compatriot Jerry Bell 15/-9, 15/-2.
Playing with a -40 handicap, Badrinauth made light work of his opponent who failed to capitalise on his -25 handicap. Badrinauth won 15/9, 15/11 in two straight sets.
Starting the match at -15 because of Marcus' -25 handicap and the fact that the game was of a 15-point duration, Badrinauth won the right to serve first and immediately raced to -12, but Marcus fought back and won two points in the rolling points system to see the score at 3/-12.
Badrinauth then won six consecutive points playing some excellent soft touches to the front court, catching Marcus flatfooted most times. Then, using the side wall to good effect coupled with some powerful shots, the defending champion erased his deficit and went on to lead 10/4 before Marcus won another point. However, on winning back the service at 11/7, Badrinauth went on to chalk up four consecutive points to win the game.
Game two saw Badrinauth playing a similar game as he did in the first, with the only difference being he did not use the drop shots as much as he did in the first. He won without a fuss.
Badrinauth was down to face a +10 handicapper in Andy Gouveia last evening in a quarter-final fixture.
Gouveia defeated T. Williams (+2) 15/9, 15/11 on Thursday evening.
In the Narain versus Bell encounter, Narain, playing with a +14 handicap only needed to win one point to win the game since Bell was handicapped -20.
Bell, though he lost 9/15 in the first game, did well to win 29 points. In the second game however, Bell failed to erase his 20-point deficit and lost -2/15.
Narain was scheduled to face Guyana Squash Association president Khalil Alli (-5) last night in another quarter-final match.
While Alli did well to beat J. Simon (+6) 15/11, 15/10 on Thursday, he might just find winning 20 points before Narain wins one, a bit too much.
This in itself, if Narain would have won last night, will set up an exciting encounter tonight between Narain and the winner of the Badrinauth versus Andy Gouveia fixture.
Should he have to face Badrinauth, then the latter will have to win 55 points in both games as opposed to Narain's one point in each of the two games.
On the other hand, if Andy Gouveia came out on top last night, he would have to win 13 points in each of the two games against Narain's one point.
In other results, Turhan Mohabeer beat H. Forrester 15/9, 15/13, Ingram Edwards defeated Maria Atkinson 15/12, 15/14, Damien DaSilva beat Alex Gouveia 15/12, 17/15 and Deje Dias secured a walk-over from N. Persaud. The tournament will climax on Sunday.