R2: One of the best matches of the year, Yous 3/2 Abhay

Posted on by

[6] Youssef Ibrahim (EGY) 3-2 Abhay Singh (IND)  7-11, 11-9, 9-11, 11-5, 11-8 (68m)

report to come

Abhay

I’m happy with the way I played. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how happy you are with the way you played, when you fall short, there are things still you think you could have done better.

But at that level, it’s all about margins. At the end, it is a bit of everything really… he was a little bit more on top of the ball, thanks to his speed, he is a bit quicker than I am. And when we went through quite extreme movement, I was getting a bit exposed, that’s a way to look at the loss. Maybe work on the speed, get a bit more explosive, may make the difference.

Also, he reads the ball a lot better than I do; he reads the ball as good as anybody else reads the ball, and he pounces off it well, so I’ll be watching a bit of him and me and see what I can learn from today.

To push someone who is top 5, top 6, top 7, I’m proud of myself, although I’m quite upset…

Yous

“Yeh I’m very pleased. It’s not the way I would have wanted to win today – the fifth he was playing much better than I was. I had to dig really deep to get any winners. Overall, his gameplan was too good and I was too flat in the first game.

“I’m trying to manage my shoulder injury as much as possible. After Optasia I didn’t think I was going to play here – I was just taking it day by day. I’ve just been trying to push for the last few tournaments. The World Championships is going to be my last tournament [of the season].

“I’m really pleased to reach the quarters here, I’m going to enjoy this as much as I can, get the shoulder recovered as much as possible, and look forward to the quarters.”