KARACHI: Pakistan’s Moiz Ullah Baig won the Junior World Scrabble Championship played at Torquay, England on Monday.

This is the second youth title of Moiz’s career having won the World Youth Scrabble Championship in 2013. He is the only player in history to achieve this feat.According to the information received here, Moiz climbed the number one spot after round six on the first day and never relinquished his position till the end. Moiz was declared the champion with one round to go as he had an unassailable lead. He ended with 20 wins out of the 24 matches and a huge spread of 1,968, winning praise from all the senior players that witnessed the game on a giant screen at the venue.

Hammad Hadi Khan, title holder of Princess Cup Youth tournament, was the runner-up with 17 wins and a spread of 1,598.

The defending champion Matthew O’conner of USA made an astonishing recovery on the final day winning seven of his last eight matches to climb to the third position.

Matthew was surrounded by Pakistani players as the fourth position was claimed by the 12-year-old Imaad Ali with 16 wins and a spread of 870.

Sohaib Sanaullah finished fifth and Hassan Hadi Khan sixth.

The Pakistan team created history by winning all the six age category titles. Moiz was of course the world champion overall but Pakistan also won all other age group titles.

U-18 world champion — Sohaib Sanaullah; U-16 world champion — Hamza Naeem; U-14 world champion — Imaad Ali; U-12 world champion — Muzammil Asim; U-10 world champion — Misbah ur Rehman.

This is the most dominating performance by any country in the history of scrabble.

Sumbul Siddiqui, who moved from Pakistan to UK in 2012, finished as the top female player and the highest ranked player from England.

The chief guest, 2016 world scrabble Champion Brett Smitheram was all praise for Pakistan and predicted bigger things to come in future.

The World Scrabble Championship will begin from Wednesday. Waseem Khatri and Tariq Pervez will be joined by some of the youngsters who’ll try their luck against the adult players.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2018

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