World Youth Scrabble Championship: Pakistan’s Absar takes team to second spot

Makes massive leap from 39th position to move to number two in third round

KARACHI: Absar Mustajab led Pakistan’s contingent to second place in the on-going World Youth Scrabble Championship (WYSC) as he defeated Sri Lanka’s Migara Jayasinghe 440-359 by the third round of the event yesterday in Lille, France.

Out of a total of 137 players in the competition, Pakistan is fielding 17 and is hoping to bring back the 2013 glory by winning the tournament for the second time. For the last two years, the squad has been finishing as runner-up.

On day one, Thavalakshman Yogana topped in the third round, whereas Pakistan’s Hasham Hadi Khan finished the third match with a win against Pakistan’s Muddasir Memon 494-367 on the fourth place.



Absar made a huge leap in the second round of the event against Malaysia’s Abid Mukhriz 564-326 to move to second place, he started off on the 39th position in the first round. Meanwhile, Danial Iqbal lost his match against Australia’s Rahul Jegatheva 494-320.

Ahmed Salik hung on to ninth place with a win against Sri Lanka’s Aabid Ismail 444-407, while Hassan bin Arshad and Taha Mirza were in the top 20 as well.



However, Pakistan’s top player Abdullah Abbasi had a slow start and was on the 41st place by the end of the third round.  The tournament will continue over the weekend for 24 rounds.

According to Pakistan team’s coach, Moizullah Baig, expectations from Pakistan are high. “I’ve been through this so I know that if we need to win, we need to forget what happened in the last match and focus on the present moment. It doesn’t matter what the previous result was,” Moiz told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28^th, 2016.

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