Paris Squash QF: Defending Champion Farag Battles Past ElShorbagy In Four 

World No.1 Ali Farag moved one step closer to defending his title at Paris Squash 2024 after battling past long-time rival Mohamed ElShorbagy in four games. 

Farag, the top seed at this year’s event, was forced to produce some high-quality squash on his way to his fourth straight victory over ‘The Beast’, taking the match by an 11-6, 10-12, 11-5, 11-2 scoreline in just over 50 minutes of play.

ElShorbagy started the match brightly, taking a slender early lead, but in typical Farag fashion, the Egyptian began to grow into the match, constructing some long, physical rallies and hitting into the front two corners to great effect. 

After Farag took the opener though, ElShorbagy bounced back in brilliant fashion, producing a series of brilliant winners and going toe-to-toe throughout a brutal 17-minute second game. The England No.1 saved a game ball at 10-9 down and went on to take the subsequent tie-break and level the match. 

The physical effort that ElShorbagy threw into the end-phases of the second began to show in both the third and fourth games, with Farag asserting dominance on the ‘T’ and opening up the court more in what was earlier a backhand-heavy encounter.

The top seed moved through the third and fourth games without too many scares to advance through to the last four. He now face one of Diego Elias or Karim Abdel Gawad in Friday night’s semi-final.

After the match, Farag said: “I’m very tired but very relieved! For me, Mohamed [ElShorbagy] was, is, and will always be my toughest ask on Tour.

I’ve had 30 battles with him over the years, only on the PSA Squash Tour, and he’s presented me with the toughest challenges throughout my career. Whether it be physically, mentally or tactically, everything you can think of. Even though he might have fallen down in the rankings a little bit, for me he’s always the toughest challenge. I was very edgy all day, even when I talked to Nour [El Tayeb] earlier on the phone she said, ‘I can feel that you’re not your normal self because of what Mohamed presents on court.’

“Honestly, it’s a privilege having my friend here, we’re more than brothers and looking at him in between points he gave me the courage to keep on going even though he was better at some points in the match. Just having his support was tremendous and I’m very pleased.

“Today it was a battle down the backhand wall. Mohamed was using height very smartly and he wasn’t letting me stand in front of him as much as I would have liked to and putting work into his legs and move the ball around as much as I would like to do. He was so often ahead of me in the match across the ’T’ area and I had to use height and I didn’t feel as sharp with my straight backhand hitting with my attacking shots in general.

“It wasn’t because I was playing badly, it was because I was playing against Mohamed. He makes you edgy and I had to use height to extend the court in the third and try to take away the volley from the ’T’ area. I think it worked and walked away from 1-1, 5-5 was a tough challenge.”

Result:

[1] Ali Farag (EGY) bt [8] Mohamed ElShorbagy (ENG) 3-1: 11-6, 10-12, 11-5, 11-2 (51m)