Khatri fourth among world’s best

National scrabble champion impresses winner Nigel Richards in Sri Lanka.

KARACHI: National champion Waseem Khatri made a phenomenal comeback on the last day of the Sri Lanka International Scrabble Tournament to take fourth position in the event that is featuring world’s top 80 players in Colombo on Sunday.

Khatri won 16 matches and drew one. He faced some difficult competition on day two; however, he bounced back on the concluding day and won six out of his eight matches.

Reigning world youth champion Moizullah Baig stood eighth with 16 wins.

New Zealand’s Nigel Richards won the tournament, while Howard Warner secured the second position and India’s Sherwin Rodrigues finished third.

Beating Richards was special: Khatri

This was Khatri’s best performance at any international tournament so far, and the 22-year-old believes that giving tough competition to World Champion Nigel Richards was his biggest achievement.

“I got to defeat Richards and that was a special moment,” Khatri told The Express Tribune. “My target was to win six matches on the last day to finish among the top players.

“With Richards, I defeated him on day two, but he got back at me. He polarised me in our last match. He said I was better than him in the match and that is amazing, because Richards is a word machine.”

Khatri said that Moiz’s performance was also remarkable.

“Moiz lost to the world champion by three points. We did impress everyone here. Even nin-year-old Hasham Hadi grabbed everyone’s attention with a world record spread of 878 points.”

Meanwhile, Pakistan Scrabble Association Director Youth Tariq Pervez said: “It’s an achievement for Khatri to finish fourth among world top players. It’s special.

“Moiz also left a huge mark, being the youngest among the top 10 players here. Everyone is saying that Moiz will prove to be too good for the World Youth Championship if he is playing with such finesse among the adults.”

Pakistan’s 13-member squad will compete in the World Youth Scrabble Championship on August 29, and in the side event on August 26 at the scrabble festival.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2014.

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