Doha — This was no way to end what had been a pulsating quarter-final and 70 minutes of scampering squash.
Amid outright anguish for Abdulla Al-Tamimi, the Qatari went down at 6-7 in the fifth with a suspected ruptured Achilles against Jonah Bryant. A likely season-ender. His shrieks took over the indoor arena as silence descended, the paramedics came on court before, several minutes later, physio Derek Ryan signalled the end. Al-Tamimi was carried out and then left in a wheelchair.Â
Beating his junior arch rival is one thing, but the 20-year-old is unlikely to have experienced anything like this in the space of two days as Bryant wandered the court with medical staff surrounding his opponent. It was pure anguish.
And now? No Briton in the modern era has achieved what Bryant has in the first weeks of a debut season on the world tour at his tender age. On Thursday, the unseeded Brightonian reached the Qatar Classic semi-finals and will play training partner Paul Coll for a place in the final here to earn a major slice of British squash history.
Buoyed on by the Doha locals, the adventurous Al Tamimi had valliantly come back from 2-1 down and then 7-2 behind in the fourth to somehow take it to a decider.
Earlier, this match had been notable for an array of backhand drop winners from the Qatari — as well as a litany of errors to the tin, well over a dozen and counting. Meanwhile, the pick up and retrieval work from Bryant was worthy of best in show if Crufts was a human event. It wasn’t the best quality, but exciting all the same, with an emerging talent and a home hope whipping up the crowd.
Not to put more agony onto Al Tamimi after what he experienced horrendously here, but it was the mistakes which had initially put paid to his hopes as he tried to get too cute on a court suited to the speedster’s liking and his wristy, crowd-pleasing shot-making.
And so Bryant advances. According to Squashinfo, James Willstrop was 21 when he won his first World Series event at the Pakistan Open. Nick Matthew was 23 when he made the Qatar Classic semi-finals. The Briton will now have to topple the top two seeds to win here.
Wow! 😲
Jonah Bryant & Abdulla Mohd Al-Tamimi are BRINGING it in Doha! pic.twitter.com/DKuhwBMIuB
— PSA Squash Tour (@PSASquashTour) October 2, 2025
Coll took 96 minutes to overcome Mohamed Abouelghar 11-8, 8-11, 10-12, 11-7, 11-8 in a nailbiter which also saw the Kiwi finish with a bloodied thumb.
Coll, who has fallen in the early rounds here in previous seasons, had to overturn a 2-1 deficit as the Egyptian succumbed to a mid-match ankle injury.Â
He was playing sublime squash in a free-flowing match up until that point and had to go gun-slinging short in the fifth. It briefly put Coll off guard, with blood also becoming evident on his shorts thanks to several scampering retrievals on the wood floor, before edging through. But only after producing an air shot on one of his match points.
Top seed Nour Elsherbini, who has been tardy in her opening matches here, produced a match of two halves akin to her epic World Championship comeback against Olivia Weaver.
The Egyptian was two games down against Melissa Weaver, who was playing her first world tour last eight for four years, before blitzing the next two in 13 minutes.
Alves rallied late on in the fifth and briefly looked like she may take it to a tie break, with Elsherbini wrongly thinking she had won the match on a stroke. She duly completed an 11-13, 9-11, 11-6, 11-4, 11-7 victory on the next point.
She will play Tinne Gilis, who beat Farida Mohamed 3-1.