INCHEON: Pakistan’s Sanaullah made a fantastic debut here in the 17th Asian Games Boxing Championship when he outpointed Muhammad Ali Al Qahtani of Saudi Arabia in the 91kg weight division to advance into the quarter-finals at Seonhak Gymnasium on Friday.

Earlier, strong Shiva Thapa of India technically knocked out Nadir Baloch of Pakistan to advance into the quarterfinal rounds on Friday. Thapa’s punches proved too much for Nadir who could not hold his own in the fight and referee Birgar Allan Roos stopped the bout in the first round after just one minutes and five seconds.

Sanaullah displayed brilliant left-right combination to keep his Saudi opponent under pressure and won his three round bout with unanimous point’s decision from the judge.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Ahmed Ali, who won his opening round, made his exit in the pre-quarterfinal when he lost to Jordan’s Mustufa Muhammad Obada on technical knockout.

Obada handed few hard punches to Ahmed when the referee stopped the bout in the third minute of the third round and declared Jordanian boxer as the winner.

Thapa adopted attacking approach from the outset and unsettled his opponent with flurry of punches and Nadir was profusely bleeding from the right eye-brow after receiving a big cut. He was later taken to hospital for treatment but received no stitches.

Pakistan’s main medal hope and Commonwealth Games silver medallist Mohammad Waseem will be seen in action on Saturday in the flyweight division. He will be facing R I Chungli of South Korea in the last 16 round.

Country’s most experienced pugilist, Waseem is ranked 9th in the Asian Games and will be facing a strong challenge to reach the semi-final in the presence of formidable boxers from Central Asian Republics, China, Korea and Thailand.

Pakistan coach Ali Bakhsh, himself a gold medallist in light-fly class at the 1982 New Delhi Asian Games, was also pinning hopes on Waseem. “It will be tough against the Korean boxer tomorrow but Waseem has produced his best against the Koreans before and I am confident he will win,” said the coach.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan volleyball team crashed out of the Games when they suffered their third successive defeat at the hands of Saudi Arabia 3-0 at Ansan Sangroksu Gymnasium on Friday.

They had earlier lost the matches against defending champion Japan and fancied Kuwait teams but not before a fight. However, on Friday, Pakistan spikers put up a disappointing show when went down 15-25, 20-25, 23-25 against the Saudis.

Saudi trio of Mohammad Majed Al Jahani (14), Abdulrehman Ahmed Al Bakhet (13) and Abdulrehman Nawaf Al-Bakhet (12) kept Pakistan defence at bay with an outstanding display of attack and defence. Pakistan best players were Ismail Khan (10) and Naseer Ahmed (10).

In the shooting competition, Pakistan’s emerging marksman Ghulam Mustufa Bashir finished 10th in the Centre-fire Pistol at Ongnyeon International Shooting Range on Friday.

Fast emerging Bashir, the reigning national champion and record holder back home, managed to accumulate a total of 580/600. He fired the rounds of 96, 95, 95 in precision and 98, 98, 98 in rapid round to get a good position in the pack of 28 sharp shooters from across the continent.

He almost matched the performance of fancied Indian shooters Gurpreet Singh and Pemba Tamang, who just finished above him at 8th and 9th position with scores of 581 and 580.

Oleg Engachev of Qatar finished on the top qualifying rounds with score 585 after rounds of 94, 97, 97 in precision and 99, 100, 98 in rapid to finish on the top.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2014