R3: When Nada came back from 2/0 down to take out Siva!

Nada Abbas (EGY) 3-2 Sivasangari Subramaniam (MAS)  5-11, 9-11, 12-10, 11-9, 11-7 (63m)

Little in size, maybe, but big in talent.

Nada today produced one of the best performances I’ve seen her play. She picked up every single shot that Siva was throwing at her, and that put immense pressure onto the Malaysian’s shoulders. Also, the constant, relentless attacks, particularly on the left front corner, forced Siva to work an incredible lot.

Probably the key to the match is the willingness to win the Egyptian produced today. To summarise, Nada wanted it more. And as Siva’s coach stated, Siva seemed to fear losing more than wanting to win.

Fitness and determination are the reasons for Nada’s comeback. Both are intricately linked to spotless fitness, thanks to Diana Karim, one of the top fitness coaches in Egypt.

As for Siva, even in the second game that she won, she seemed to get in and out of the match, in the middle of the games, making uncharacteristic errors, to find a bit of mental focus and energy at the end of the games. It was giving fuel and gas to Nada’s wings, and allowed the Egyptian to believe she could take her old junior friend down.

PSA Report

World No.17 Nada Abbas came back from two games down to delight the home crowd and reach the quarter-final of the 2024 CIB Egyptian Open thanks to a battling performance against World No.9 Sivasangari Subramaniam.

Malaysian Sivasangari, who famously defeated World No.s 1 and 3 Nour El Sherbini and Hania El Hammamy at last season’s London Classic, was dominant early on in the proceedings today, racing into a 2-0 lead inside of 20 minutes.

Egypt’s Abbas fought back brilliantly, though. The 24-year-old, who lives just 15 minutes from Club O West and was loudly backed by friends and family, struck back in game three as she escaped an 8-9 deficit to clinch it on a tiebreak

From here, confidence seemed to ebb from Sivasangari, with Abbas – who now had the wind in her sails – drawing level with an 11-9 win and then taking the decider 11-7.

To be noted, Nada got penalised at 5/5 in the 1st for stepping in and taking the line of her opponent, Nada was really surprised by the decision, and didn’t get another point in that game. Same decision, same exit from the ball, at 6/6 in the second. And when she came back for the third game, Nada asked the ref politely what he was advising her to do not to get penalised. I didn’t really understand the directive given, but it seemed to work as Nada was not again penalised from that backhand front court drop shot again.

Communication seems to work…

 

Ajaz (Malaysian coach) : I think that after wining the first two games, she started to fear losing the match. that’s my feeling. She was getting more and more passive, shots with no purpose, no enough pace, rallies too short, more unforced errors than usual… All that mounted the pressure on her.

Now, Nada did very well, she came back from 2/0 down, she fought very well in the 3rd game. In my opinion, the third game is the turning point of the match. Nada seemed a bit more confident at that point, while Siva looked more passive in the 4th and 5th.

Nada

“The old me would have overthought and got frustrated at myself. But today at 0-2 down I was like ‘okay I’m 0-2 down, let’s forget it and play game by game, point by point and see how that goes. Even if I was going to lose, I didn’t want to lose like this. I want to give a good fight.

“So I’m glad I could hold myself and focus and get the win at the end.

“We’d only played a couple of times and that was a long time ago but we trained a lot together. We grew up together I was aware of her skills and how tough she is, so I’m really, really happy to be through.

“I’m really glad I had all my friends here cheering for me. They were hyping me up and cheering for me every point so I’m very glad and grateful they were here.”

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