ISLAMABAD, Jan 14: Pakistan’s leading junior squash players Waqar Mehboob and Shoaib Hasan deliberately threw away their matches in the recently concluded British Junior Open Squash Championship, alleged team coach Faheem Gul on Wednesday.

Pakistan junior squash team returned home after putting up a miserable show in the recently-concluded British Championship held at Sheffield, England from Jan 2-6. Waqar Mehboob lost the quarter-final match against Karim Abdel Gawad of Egypt 11-2, 8-11, 11-6, 11-5 in a half-hour encounter while Alferdo Avila of Mexico walloped Shoaib Hassan 9-11, 11-6, 11-5, 11-6 in a 50-minute decider after both the Pakistanis had made reasonable headway in the event.

Talking to Dawn on Wednesday, coach Faheem said: “Both the players deliberately lost their matches despite having the potential to win their fixtures.”

Waqar and Shoaib, he said, were so careless that they were not picking up sloppy shots played by their rivals during the match. “There was no effort at all by them to win the contests.” The coach, however, was reluctant to elaborate when asked to substantiate his allegations with any definite proof.

When queried if he had reported the matter to the Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) management, Faheem remarked: “The secretary PSF also witnessed the match and even the foreign junior players were questioning about their lop-sided show. I just can’t imagine why they lost the games like that but their defeats must be investigated by the PSF.”

Both the players, he said, passed their ‘bleep test’ level and were ranked at level-12 out of 20 which was quite good. In a ‘bleep test’ the players have to clear multi-level fitness tests to prove their strength level for any important fixture.

“For a junior player level-12 is a good standard and players with this level can compete at any junior international tournament,” he said.

When contacted for his comments on the allegations levelled by the coach, Waqar said: “It’s a baseless allegation. My game score is evident and prove my point that I lost the game 3-1 which means I tried hard in the game.”

The coach, he alleged, was not even present at the venue during his quarter-final fixture and was therefore not qualified to comment on the outcome.

Shoaib Hasan, on the other hand, remarked: “Why would a player loose a match deliberately? It’s embarrassing to learn about these non-factual allegations.”

He said since Waqar had already lost his quarter-final match, “I was under pressure to perform and win my fixture when I overheard a PSF official as saying that, “He [Shoaib] will also loose his match.

“That didn’t help at all since I was already feeling a bit down and was having severe stomach pain on the day but still I performed my best. You can ask any spectator who watched my game.”

Faheem later asserted that the PSF must hire psychologists to improve the mental strain level of national players during any international tournament.

Faheem accepted that in case of Danish Atlas, it was more of a bad luck than his bad performance which accounted for his loss. Danish lost the final game in the U-17 category against Amr Khalid Khalifa from Egypt with scores of 11-3, 11-4 and 14-12 in 34-minute fixture.

Regarding Maria Toor, the only female player who participated in the U-19 category, Faheem said: “Maria was clearly overweight and therefore could not make an impact.”