Youngsters fetch accolades for Pakistan

Moiz, 2013 youth champion, claims second position in event

KARACHI: Pakistan dominated the Junior World Scrabble Championship in Nottingham with their exceptional performances in seven age categories with the 2013 World Scrabble Youth Champion Moizullah Baig grabbing the second position.

In the three-day affair, Moiz couldn’t move upwards from his second place courtesy some stiff competition from American player Mattew O’ Conner, who eventually won the title with a 20-4 record. Moiz was second with 18 wins and a spread of 1,037.

Trinidad and Tobago’s Daniel Henriques finished third with 16 wins and a spread of 1,352.

“We were expecting Moiz to win,” the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) Director youth Program Tariq Pervez told The Express Tribune from England. “He had tough luck and also he was very exhausted. He had missed the train and travelled all night before reaching for the championships, so of course that takes a toll. But he played brilliantly.”

Pakistan’s Sohaib Sanaullah, Imaad Ali, Ahad Riaz, Abdullah Abbasi and Saim Waqar made it into the top ten of the U21 event.

Pervez added that this has been the most successful run at the Junior World Championship by any country so far, where categories starting from U10, U12, U14, U16 and U18 were all won by Pakistanis besides the four different records at the championship.

“It has been a great show for us and people from other countries are saying that they see Pakistan dominating world scrabble in the next few years. It is a great feeling to see our youth players doing so well,” said Pervez, who has been one of the PSA veterans to run the youth scrabble program to its best potential.

The surprise of the tournament has been Happy Home student Hamza Naeem, who qualified for the junior World Championship for the first time and won the U14 event too.

“It is an honour to win for Pakistan,” said the 13-year-old. “My parents are very happy too, and it was a tough tournament. I don’t think I had any easy match, but I feel I worked hard on word study and that helped. I only began playing scrabble at school one and a half years ago, however now I want to win more tournaments in the future.”

Ahad won the U18 event, newly crowned national champion Sohaib Sanaullah took the title in the U16 category, while Imaad and Moonis Khan defended their titles successfully from last year in U12 and U10 events.

Wali M Khubaib won the prize for scoring highest move, Taha Mirza got the award for highest score off a non-bingo, Simal Linjara had the highest match score of 650 and Monis took the prize for highest win margin (484) in the championship.