Neel Joshi enters semi-finals of British Junior Open Squash

Neel Joshi

12-year-old Neel Joshi continued his rampage at the prestigious British Junior Open Squash Championships as he booked his berth in the Boys U13 semi-finals of this Sheffield tournament on Monday. The 9/16 seeded Joshi played a brilliant match to stun the 5/8 seed Oliver Green of England, 11/5, 11/7, 11/6. The match duration was just 20 minutes.

He will next face the 3/4 seed Muhammad Azhar of Malaysia for a place in the final.

The Mumbai boy has been in impressive form for quite some time and had a lot of success in the U13 category recently. In 2015, he captured the U13 National title, besides reigning supreme at the ISA Junior Open, the NSCI Junior Open, the Indian Junior Open and the 72nd CCI Western India Open.

Joshi is now the last Indian remaining in contention for the gold medal at the British Junior Open.

U17 Boys National Champion Adhitya Raghavan and U15 Girls National Championships runner-up Navmi Sharma did not have the same fortune as both of them crashed out in the quarter-finals. Adhitya, seeded 5/8, played a hard-fought first game but could not do much thereafter as he went down 11/13, 4/11, 5/11 to second seed Marwan Tarek of Egypt in 35 minutes.

The 5/8 seeded Navmi had earlier showed a lot of grit to prevail 13/11, 11/8, 10/12, 11/9 over 9/16 seeded English girl Eve Coxon en route to the quarter-finals. But she could not sustain it there and bowed out 7/11, 3/11, 3/11 to the ¾ seed Nouran Youssef of Egypt in 23 minutes.