Women's doubles still alive at the squash

Joelle King and Amanda Landers-Murphy have come through a particularly tough draw to make tomorrow’s women’s semi-final squash final.

They lost their first match in group play, and today faced a challenging quarter-final against second-seeded English pair Jenny Duncalf and Alison Waters, who they beat in the world doubles final last year.

The first game could not have been closer, until the English reached game ball at 10-9. King and Landers-Murphy then raised their level and peeled off two points after long, exacting rallies to win the game 11-10. 

In the second game the New Zealanders got off to a better start and moved from 5-3 through to 11-6 without too many dramas. They play their semi-final against Australians Rachael Grinham and Donna Urquhart tomorrow.

“In doubles there’s quite a bit of momentum. We did really well to keep our foot down on the pedal,” King said. ”We played pretty well today. We gelled well in the first and in the second we really stepped it up.

“Really happy to get through that one,” Landers-Murphy said. ”It was tough and they were a good team.”

In the men’s doubles quarter-finals, third seeded New Zealanders Paul Coll and Campbell Grayson took on fifth-seeded Australians Zac Alexander and David Palmer.

The Australians won a hard-fought encounter 11-9, 6-11, 11-7 in 48 minutes. “They played a good match,” Coll conceded. 

Coll had his second loss of the day when he and King, the top seeds, went down to the Indian pair of Dipika Pallikal Karthik and Saurava Ghosal in an exciting semi-final. The Indians won 11-9, 8-11, 11-10. In the last rally of the match, both teams had matchpoint.

By the end of the day, Coll and King had played 14 and 13 matches respectively, over every day of the Commonwealth Games, and were facing more tomorrow.