Qatar’s team Cherif and Ahmed lived up to expectations of home fans when they stormed into the quarter-finals of the Katara Beach Volleyball Cup yesterday with a dominant win over their Spanish counterparts.
At Al Gharafa Sports Complex yesterday, the Pool H winners and home favourites, Cherif and Ahmed defeated Pablo Herrera Allepuz and Adrián Gavira Collado in straight sets (21 – 16, 21 – 15) to book a quarter-final meeting with Russia’s Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner today.
The eighth-seeded Qatari stars made had earlier defeated Austria’s Robin Seidl and Philipp Waller and followed up with a 2-1 victory over Mexico’s Jose Luis Rubio Camargo and Josue Gaston Gaxiola Leyva in the Pool stage of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour 4-star event.
Meanwhile, in the women’s tournament, an exciting lineup of matches was set for today’s quarter-finals. Reigning world champions and FIVB World Ranking leaders Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes mastered a great comeback in an all-Canadian clash with Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson to dominate in the tie-breaker towards a 2-1 (18-21, 21-18, 15-9) victory and advance to the last eight.
The duo will face Russia’s Nadezda Makroguzova and Svetlana Kholomina, who knocked out two German teams yesterday on the way to the quarter-finals, defeating both Kim Behrens & Sandra Ittlinger and Victoria Bieneck & Isabel Schneider in straight sets. Meanwhile, 24th-seeded Ksenia Dabizha and Daria Rudykh also had a fabulous day, with three wins in a row that led them to a spot in the quarter-finals. In the first elimination round, they upset Czech pair, Barbora Hermannova and Marketa Slukova, with a 2-1 (16-21, 21-17, 15-10) comeback and, riding the momentum, stunned sixth-seeded Joana Heidrich and Anouk Verge-Depre of Switzerland, defeating them in straight sets, 2-0 (21-19, 21-17)