Daily Times

LAHORE: Pakistan’s badminton player Mahoor Shahzad kicked-off country’s 2020 Olympic campaign with a 21-3 and 21-8 defeat against world number five Akane Yamaguchi in Tokyo on Saturday. Mahoor was outplayed by the Japanese opponent in the best of three games, round one match in just 23 minutes. Yamaguchi took only 10 minutes to win the first game 21-3. However, Mahoor showed some resistance in the second game, but only to lose that too by a score of 21-8. The dominance of Mahoor’s Japanese opponent can be measured by the fact that the Pakistani shuttler was unable to win two consecutive points throughout the match. Meanwhile, Yamaguchi scored eight consecutive points in the first game and seven on the trot in the second game. Other than that, Mahoor was able to bag only two points with her service, while Yamaguchi made complete use of her service and bagged 18 and 15 points with her service in first and second game, respectively. Next up, Mahoor will face Britain’s Kirsty Gilmour on July 27. In the shooting competition, Pakistan’s Gulfam Joseph achieved 9th position in the 10M Air Pistol Olympic Qualification. The first 8 shooters qualified for the finals. Gulfam was tied with No. 7 and 8 with the same score of 578/600. Lady luck was not on the side of Gulfam who missed the finals due to a tie with two other shooters on the same score.