Farhan faces Tayyab in all-Pakistan International Squash final.

ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's Farhan Mehboob came from behind to beat top seed Egyptian Youssef Ibrahim 3-2 in their semifinals of the Serena Hotels-Huawei Pakistan International Squash Tournament 2019 played here at Mushaf Squash Complex on Wednesday.

Tayyab Aslam thrashed Egyptian Mohamed ElSherbini 3-1 in the second semifinal to set up final date with Farhan Mehboob, making it all-Pakistan final. Farhan was up against top seed Youssef, who is presently world number 43 in the PSA rankings. In the first game, Youssef controlled the things and soon won it 11-8. The second game was played on a high tempo as both the players were playing superb squash and they were duly applauded by the pack-to-capacity crowd. Farhan had at least four clear-cut chances to wrap up the game, but he failed to take advantage and Youssef took it 16-14.

After losing two back-to-back games, Farhan bounced back in style and simply outclassed Youssef in the third game, winning it 11-2, fourth game by 11-5 while in the fifth game, the Egyptian first took 5-2 lead and then 7-4, but Mehboob, backed by massive crowd, played tremendously and first leveled the game at 7-7 and then took 10-7 lead. But Youssef saved three match points before Farhan woke up timely and won the next two points in a row to take the game 12-10, thus won the encounter in 54 minutes.

In the second semi-final, Tayyab Aslam was up against world no 51 Mohamed ElSherbini of Egypt. Tayyab never allowed ElSherbini any chance to settle down in the game and took the first game 11-6 but he lost concentration and also the second game 9-11. He then made a tremendous comeback and won the third game 11-9 and fourth 11-9 to set final meeting with Farhan Mehboob.

In the ladies $12,000 Serena Hotels-Huawei Pakistan International Squash Tournament 2019 semifinals, Egyptian Hana Moataz and Sabrina Sobhy of USA made it to the final after registering contrastive...