SquashTalk>Columns>Team Kneipp > World Teams 2005 > Pool F Preview

The 20th Mens Teams

Pool F: [6] Malaysia, [7] Pakistan, [13/18] Scotland, [19/22] Spain

The final pool is the most interesting one and the only pool without a considerably strong team shadowing the rest of the field, who are simply fighting for the second place scraps.

Malaysia
Malaysia went from finishing 7th in 2001, to 14th in 2003. It was after the World Teams in Vienna that Ong Beng Hee’s ranking slid from the top 10, out of the top 20, and it’s only now that he’s going in the right direction again. I’m pretty sure this is the first team event that Bengy has played where he is #2 on the team behind Iskandar. Malaysia is really a two-horse team, with the ranking scale going 14 (Iskandar), 17 (Bengy) then 129 (Arnold). This would normally be a problem, but Pakistan, Scotland and Spain all have low ranked players in the third position.

Pakistan
For a country that has the second best record at this event, Pakistan’s form over the past decade has been pretty dismal. They won the event in 1993, came second in 1995 but have finished 12th, 11th and 9th over the past three events. Shahid and Mansoor lead the team out, but the numbers 3 and 4 are both ranked around one hundred.

Scotland.
Scotland’s native-born players at the top of the PSA rankings have left wee bonnie Johnny White on his own. Peter Nicol found greener pastures south of the border and Martin Heath now coaches in the US. John White’s a pretty special player, but not even he can win this event alone. He has three fresh faces making up his team, but two of them don’t have a ranking and the other is 273.

Spain
Spain didn’t field a team in 2003, which was crazy seeing as Golan was setting the squash world on fire and tournaments were being hosted in Spain and won by locals. The country has played in the World Teams eight times but has never done any better than 14. The last two results were 22 and 21.

Golan had some excellent results a couple of years ago, but he hasn’t yet been able to take his game to the next level. He’s easily the strongest Spanish player, but he’ll be the underdog against the number ones on each other team in this pool.

Malaysia and Pakistan should see their way through the pool stages, but both Scotland and Spain could cause an upset.

Malaysia
Mohd Azlan Iskander
Beng Hee Ong
Timothy Arnold
Mohamed Nafizwan

Pakistan
Shahid Zaman
Mansoor Zaman
Farhan Mehboob
Safeerullah Khan

Scotland
John White
Harry Leitch
Stuart Crawford
Alan Clyne

Spain
Borja Goran
David Vidal
Iago Cornes
Alejandro Garbi

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