Bianchetti outguns Willstrop

10.10.00 Birmingham, SquashTalk News by M Bronstein

[also: complete day one men's qualifying, women's qualifying]

Squashtalk. October 10 2000

THE UNITED NATIONS OF SQUASH
By the time the Men's qualifying had finished two Australians, two Englishmen, a Finn, a Belgian, a Malaysian and an Italian had earned the right to play in the main draw. In the Women's qualifying, the emphasis was on the host country and Australia. The two Englishmen were Lee Beachill and Stephen Meads, ranked 27 and 32 , which is about right, being in the first group of players after the top 24 who go straight into the main draw.

Meads, now in his early thirty is one of England's great journeymen players who never quite rose to the top. On present form, you would have expected Peter Genever, ranked 38, to beat him.

Another member of the Neil Harvey stable, topped by Peter Nicol, Genever has picked up some very good wins in the last few months, but was badly off his game and, by the time the referee had handed down at least a dozen highly questionable decisions, was so thoroughly cheesed off that he was unable to pull himself together. Meads won in three and got the short straw in the draw - he meets Simon Parke in the first round proper.

Beachill, from Yorkshire, has a nice combination of length and shots and while he won't set the world on fire, he will slowly rise up the rankings to earn a top ten place. He faced another Englishman, Bradley Ball and won comfortably; he drew an ever shorter straw, number two seed Jonathon Power, the Canadian wonderboy who holds the title.

NOT A VERY FRIENDLY AFFAIR
When a referee is called up on make more than one decision every minute in a 106 minute game, you can be sure it wasn't a very friendly match. The well-built South African Rodney Durbach and the skinny Australian Stewart Boswell battled so much for the T that there was enough body contact to make it look like they were dancing the tango.

I have never seen so much shoving and pushing; not that they were antagonistic to each other - their bile was directed at the referee and quite rightly. Another referee who had been watching the match suggested that it was all to do with 'the match getting off to a bad start', his coded way of saying that the referee had not been strict enough from the word go.

THREE MATCH BALLS AND STILL A LOSER
Durbach can rightly go home saying he was robbed. After winning the first game he lost the second and cam back from 12-14 down to win the third 17-15. They went point for point in the fourth - not pretty squash but exciting - until 9-9 and then durbach pull away to get to match ball 14-13. Boswell saved it to send the game into extra points and once more Durbach had match ball at 16-15 only to lose the next two points.

They continued the battles of the bodies into the fifth at 11-11 Durbach's luck deserted him. He made a bad error to put Boswell at 12-ll and then the referee gave a stroke against him. Durbach was incensed at the decision - and quite rightly too. Boswell now stood at 13-ll and Durbach never recovered his composure to lose 15-ll. Hard done by is an understatement. Boswell now meets Del Harris in the first round proper.

THE LUCK OF THE DRAW
Italy's Davide Bianchetti plays England's Mark Chaloner, Australian John Williams drew fellow Aussie Paul Price, Ong Beng Hee meets John white of Scotland Juha Raumolin of Finland meets Australian David Palmer and Stefan Casteleyn gets Ahmed Barada.

• Golestan Radwan: Egypt
• Tomas Barva, Czech Republic
• David Blick, Alaska USA
• Kim Tunney: Midwest USA
• Andre Maur: Atlanta USA
• Paul Ansdell: Massachusetts USA
  

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