After a day two count of 30 pool matches spread across five courts, Commonwealth Games Squash action moves into the knockout stages on Thursday in the Women’s and Mixed Doubles at Oxenford Studios in Gold Coast, Australia.
A crucial encounter in the Women’s event opened proceeding on the all-glass showcourt where top-seeded New Zealanders Joelle King & Amanda Landers-Murphy faced Aussie pair Sarah Cardwell & Christine Nunn, the No.8 seeds, in a match which the Kiwi world champions – after losing in Monday’s first pool match – had to win in order to progress to the knockout stage.
With King, the newly-crowned Commonwealth singles gold medallist, now in the ‘doubles zone’, the favourites took just 21 minutes to see off the home duo 11-8, 11-6.
“If we lost, we were definitely out,” conceded King afterwards. “I guess we just wanted to come back and try and play better than we did yesterday – it was a pretty poor start from myself. I had the afternoon off yesterday and was able to recover a bit more.
“Doubles is one of those games where it takes a little bit to gell – especially when you’ve been playing singles and you’ve got to try and switch over. And we certainly gelled a lot better in that game.”
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Women’s quarter-final line-up:
[9] Rachel Arnold & Sivasangari Subramaniam (MAS) v [7] Laura Massaro & Sarah-Jane Perry (ENG)
[3] Joshna Chinappa & Dipika Pallikal Karthik (IND) v [5] Samantha Cornett & Nikki Todd (CAN)
[4] Rachael Grinham & Donna Urquhart (AUS) v [6] Tesni Evans & Deon Saffery (WAL)
[2] Jenny Duncalf & Alison Waters (ENG) v [1] Joelle King & Amanda Landers-Murphy (NZL)
Mixed last sixteen round line-up:
[1] Joelle King & Paul Coll (NZL) v [15] Meagan Best & Shawn Simpson (BAR)
[8] Joshna Chinappa & Harinder Pal Sandhu (IND) v [10] Amanda Landers-Murphy & Zac Millar (NZL)
[3] Tesni Evans & Peter Creed (WAL) v [13] Faiza Zafar & Farhan Zaman (PAK)
[5] Dipika Pallikal Karthik & Saurav Ghosal (IND) v [11] Aifa Azman & Sanjay Singh Chal (MAS)
[6] Rachael Grinham & Ryan Cuskelly (AUS) v [12] Madina Zafar & Tayyab Aslam (PAK)
[4] Donna Urquhart & Cameron Pilley (AUS) v [14] Marlene West & Cameron Stafford (CAY)
[7] Jenny Duncalf & Adrian Waller (ENG) v [9] Lisa Aitken & Kevin Moran (SCO)
[2] Alison Waters & Daryl Selby (ENG) v [16] Dianne Kellas & Bradley Hindle (MLT)
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