Pakistan’s Nasir Iqbal, Noor Zaman and Muhammad Ashab Irfan took centre stage on the opening day of the Karachi Open, scoring a trio of home wins to advance to the second round of the Gold-level event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wildcard Iqbal and Pakistan No.1 Zaman claimed respective five-game wins over Moustafa Elsirty and Melvil Scianimanico to delight the home crowds within DA Creek Club, while Ashab Irfan raced past Ryunosuke Tsukue in three games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
World No.134 Iqbal has enjoyed a wealth of success on home soil throughout his career, with 11 of his 18 PSA Tour titles coming in Pakistan – and the 31-year-old continued this strong record after battling back from two games down to defeat World No.45 Elsirty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After setting up a tie with No.5 seed Mohamad Zakaria, Iqbal said: “It was a really great match today. It was so supportive playing in front of a home crowd. Events like this will be so good for the younger generation of players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In the first two games, I was a bit slow in the midcourt, and after going 2-0 down, I got told to push Moustafa to the back two corners because he’s so tall. When I pushed him back, it gave me some room and allowed me to play in short.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, 21-year-old Zaman got the better of fellow up-and-coming star Scianimanico in a topsy-turvy five-game duel. Despite dropping two games in a mid-match slump, the World No.38 recovered to seal an 11-9, 10-12, 3-11, 11-6, 11-6 win. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the women’s draw, England’s Torrie Malik claimed the standout win after battling back from two games down to advance past Egypt’s Menna Hamed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite spurning game balls in both the opening games, World No.42 Malik rallied in impressive style, fighting back to defeat the World No.52 by a 13-15, 10-12, 11-9, 11-6, 11-5 scoreline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Results<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Men’s Round One: <\/strong>Muhammad Ashab Irfan (PAK) bt Ryunosuke Tsukue (JPN) 3-0: 11-4, 11-6, 11-9 (25m); Iker Pajares (ESP) bt [WC] Tayyab Aslam (PAK) 3-0: 11-6, 11-2, 11-7 (27m); [WC] Nasir Iqbal (PAK) bt Moustafa Elsirty (EGY) 3-2: 5-11, 8-11, 11-5, 11-9, 11-6\u00a0(56m); Alex Lau (HKG) bt Sanjay Jeeva (MAS) 3-0: 11-9, 11-5, 11-9 (38m); Karim El Hammamy\u00a0(EGY) bt Ivan Perez (ESP) 3-0: 11-6, 11-3, 11-6 (56m); Noor Zaman (PAK) bt Melvil Scianimanico (FRA) 3-2: 11-9, 10-12, 3-11, 11-6, 11-6\u00a0(49m); Yahya Elnawasany (EGY) bt Shahjahan Khan\u00a0(USA) 3-0: 11-9, 12-10, 11-8 (47m); Toufik Mekhalfi (FRA) bt Henry Leung (HKG) 3-1: 12-10, 11-3, 3-11, 11-4 (48m)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women’s Round One: <\/strong>Haya Ali (EGY) bt Nour Heikal (EGY) 3-0: 11-9, 11-9, 11-5 (23m); Nour Aboulmakarim (EGY) bt Ainaa Amani (MAS) 3-2: 7-11, 11-8, 11-2, 3-11, 11-6 (38m); Amina El Rihany (EGY) bt Marie Stephan (FRA) 3-0: 12-10, 11-7, 11-5 (25m); Mariam Metwally (EGY) bt [WC] Sana Bahadar (PAK) 3-0: 11-4, 11-1, 11-6 (15m); Sin Yuk Chan (HKG) bt [WC] Mariam Malik (PAK) 3-0: 11-2, 11-4, 11-0 (14m); Nardine Garas (EGY) bt Tsz-Wing Tong (HKG) 3-0: 11-5, 11-7, 11-8 (27m); Torrie Malik (ENG) bt Menna Hamed (EGY) 3-2: 13-15, 10-12, 11-9, 11-6, 11-5; Nadine Shahin (EGY) bt Habiba Hani (EGY) 3-0: 12-10, 11-7, 11-4 (25m)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pakistan’s Nasir Iqbal, Noor Zaman and Muhammad Ashab Irfan took centre stage on the opening day of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7636,"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":[7],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-7635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-squash"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-scaled.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-768x512.jpg",640,427,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-1024x683.jpg",640,427,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Newsbeat<\/a>","tag_info":"Newsbeat","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Squash-Noor-Zaman_compressed-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635","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=7635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7637,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions\/7637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}