Joshna Chinappa delighted the home crowd with a scintillating performance on semi-finals day at the Indian Open, setting up an all-Indian final with teenager Anahat Singh, a final that will proceed the men\u2019s showdown between Mohamad Zakaria and Youssef Soliman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chinappa was taking on young Egyptian and No.2 seed Nadien Elhammamy, who finished as runner-up at this year\u2019s WSF World Junior Championships, having beaten Singh en route to that final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was eyeing a rematch of that encounter after watching Singh book her spot in the final with a win over Hannah Craig in the day\u2019s first match, and Elhammamy made a strong start against Chinappa by winning the opening game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experienced Indian \u2013 a former World No.10 \u2013 began to find her rhythm in game two, and with that the crowd began to find its voice as well, cheering loudly as she closed out the game 11-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A 3-0 start to game three set the tone for what was to follow, with Chinappa using all her skill and experience to move Elhammamy around and put her away in the front corners when the opportunities were there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An 11-7 success put Chinappa one game from the final, and she was soon celebrating winning the fourth by the same scoreline, wrong-footing her opponent down the backhand side to clinch her third match ball at 10-7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
39-year-old Chinappa was all smiles after her win and will now take on 17-year-old Singh in a battle of the generations, after the teenager survived a major scare against Ireland\u2019s Hannah Craig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Singh had not needed more than 20 minutes to win her first two matches this week, and after winning game one here in just seven minutes and then moving 7-4 up in the second, it looked as though she was in for another straightforward evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Craig had other ideas, producing some of her best squash over the next 20 minutes or so, winning five points on the bounce to take game two 11-9 from 9-6 down, before staging another impressive comeback in game three, winning it on a tiebreak 12-10 after being 7-2 down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Singh had made a handful of uncharacteristic errors in game two and three, but she rediscovered her accuracy late in the fourth, pulling clear from 5-5 to close it out 11-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Singh was feeling the pressure of a home crowd and a deciding game, she certainly did not let it show, easing into a 4-0 lead and never looking back, wrapping up victory with a forehand drop at 10-4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The women\u2019s final will take place at 6:30pm local time, with the all-Egyptian men\u2019s matchup following on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That will see 18-year-old Zakaria play top seed Soliman after their respective wins over Yahya Elnawasany and Yannick Wilhelmi in the last four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Switzerland\u2019s Wilhelmi had already knocked out two seeded players this week in the form of Abhay Singh and Sebastein Bonmalais, and he pushed the World No.10 hard throughout the first two games, leveling at 1-1 by winning the second 11-8, after losing the first 11-6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But from there, Soliman showed his class, losing only seven more points in the match to book himself a spot in the final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zakaria, meanwhile, got the better of Elnwasany in straight games, though only after coming through a tough tiebreak in the third.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The teenager had dominated the first two games, putting plenty of work into the legs of Elnawasany, who had played an 86-minute, five-game epic against Ng Eain Yow in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Zakaria found life much more difficult in game three, with another heavy dew \u2013 which had forced his match with Velavan Senthilkumar to be moved inside 24 hours earlier \u2013 causing both players problems in the closing stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, though, the reigning world junior champion got over the line at the third time of asking, taking the tiebreak 15-13 when Elnwasany\u2019s serve return found the tin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zakaria and Soliman will now go head-to-head for the third time on the PSA Tour, with each player having won one of their previous encounters 3-0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEMI-RESULTS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Men\u2019s<\/strong>: [1] Youssef Soliman (EGY) bt. Yannick Wilhelmi (SUI) 3-1: 11-6, 8-11, 11-5, 11-2 (52m); [3] Mohamad Zakaria (EGY) bt. [8] Yahya Elnawasany (EGY) 3-0: 11-4, 11-6, 15-13 (66m)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s:<\/strong> [1] Anahat Singh (IND) bt. [3] Hannah Craig (IRL) 3-2: 11-4, 10-12, 9-11, 11-6, 11-4 (48m); Joshna Chinappa (IND) bt. [2] Nadien Elhammamy (EGY) 3-1: 7-11, 11-5, 11-7, 11-7 (44m)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joshna Chinappa delighted the home crowd with a scintillating performance on semi-finals day at the Indian Open, setting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-6352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-squash"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win.jpg",1536,1024,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win-768x512.jpg",640,427,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win-1024x683.jpg",640,427,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win.jpg",1536,1024,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win.jpg",1536,1024,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"International<\/a>","tag_info":"International","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Joshna-Chinappa-is-all-smiles-after-her-win.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6354,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6352\/revisions\/6354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}