A Match to Forget
The annual World Tour Finals brings together the best performers throughout the season for a week of high-level, high-drama squash. Technically the epilogue to last season’s protracted World Tour, the long time away from court ensured this year’s festivities felt more like the curtain raiser for the season ahead. Marwan ElShorbagy held off Ali Farag for the second time in two weeks, before breezing past Karim Abdel Gawad to claim a deserved men’s title. But it was the women’s draw which caught our attention during five blustery nights in Cairo.
Hania El Hammamy claimed her second title in three tournaments, a five-setter to go hand in hand with the Black Ball Open she won in the same city back in March. But for most of the week, the player setting the standard was her compatriot Nour El Sherbini. The Warrior Princess, free of the injuries which have plagued her of late, took maximum points from the group stage, announcing herself back on the Tour in style after sitting Manchester out.
Going into the last four, El Sherbini was the player to beat. It was conceivable she might go all tournament without dropping a game. Then something strange happened. In the blink of an eye, she had conceded two games and the match to Nour El Tayeb, the wheels coming off in spectacular fashion. In this piece, Cross Court takes a look at the numbers underpinning the Egyptian’s run through the group stage, and shows how El Sherbini’s semi-final performance – error-stricken but with no dip in the underlying performance metrics – is no genuine cause for concern.
Dominance from mid-court
El Sherbini’s percentage of shots from mid-court was consistently high throughout the tournament, reliably hitting just shy of three shots per ten from this region. Figures of 25.6% of shots hit from mid-court in her opening match against Joelle King and 28.9% against Nouran Gohar were accompanied by comfortable victories. A particularly dominant first game against Sarah-Jane Perry was underpinned by control of the mid-court, the Warrior Princess hitting a mammoth 35.0% of shots from within the boxes.
Indicative of how revealing this metric can be, El Sherbini’s lowest percentage of shots from the mid-court came in precisely those games in which she struggled: first-game-back rustiness against Joelle King – the Egyptian trailed 5-1 after the initial exchanges – and the final game collapse against Nour El Tayeb saw El Sherbini hit a low of 22.3% of shots from mid-court. But even these numbers are not unusually low, simply reflecting an opponent’s temporary dominance and exacerbated by not notching up ‘easy’ mid-court numbers by serving.
High tempo
A theme running through all of El Sherbini’s matches was the pace she looked to impose on the play. Watching the Egyptian, it is noticeable just how infrequently she opts to take pace out of the rally. Slow drives and lobs – often the recourse of a player looking to buy some recovery seconds – were almost entirely absent from El Sherbini’s game at the Mall of Arabia, as she slowed the pace just once every twenty shots. Of the 83 shots she hit in Game 1 against Perry, El Sherbini hit just one we designated as ‘slow’. Opponents know what to expect when walking on against an in-form El Sherbini: a barrage from start from finish.
Volleying: a change in approach
Whether a pre-planned strategy or just a consequence of the rhythm of the game, El Sherbini’s volleying rates across the tournament tells an interesting story. In her first two matches, against Kiwi Joelle King and compatriot Nouran Gohar, El Sherbini’s volleying rates were surprisingly low, clocking in at just one volley every ten shots. But as the tournament progressed, a change in style was perceptible. In her last two matches, the final group-stage match against Sarah-Jane Perry and the semi-final against Nour El Tayeb, El Sherbini’s volley rate doubled, as she hit one in five shots on the full. As the Tour continues, it will be interesting to see whether El Sherbini does have two kinds of gameplan – one in which she looks to volley and one in which she doesn’t – or whether the King and Gohar performances still betrayed a player finding her rhythm after 200 days away from the court.
Onto a winner
A really impressive aspect of El Sherbini’s return to match play was her ability to hit winning shots from all areas of the court. As with many players, the front left was a productive area for El Sherbini in Cairo, the Egyptian hitting one in four of her winners – designated by us as outright winners or shots which force an error – from advanced positions on her backhand. Likewise, the mid-court was a fruitful area from El Sherbini, with a third of her winners coming from within the boxes. But to hit one in six of her winners from the forehand graveyard, with the power and guile required to hit finishing from this defensive position, is indicative of a player playing with freedom and confidence.
Reflecting the Egyptian’s dominance throughout the tournament, El Sherbini hit twice as many winning shots (59) against her opponents than they hit against her (31). Even in her defeat to Nour El Tayeb, El Sherbini clocked up winning shots (16) at twice the rate of her opponent (8), despite winning seven fewer rallies. She may not have won the tournament, but this proactive, aggressive squash caught the attention of players and onlookers alike.
Errors: a tournament of two halves
Equally impressive was the Egytpian’s miserly error count across the group stage. The Warrior Princess committed just 4 unforced errors across 63 minutes and 119 rallies in the round-robin, with no unforced errors in the match against Joelle King. Sadly for El Sherbini’s trophy cabinet, this form reversed spectacularly in the defeat to Nour El Tayeb.
El Sherbini committed the same number of errors (7) in Games 2 and 3 against the Black Widow – the only games she lost in the tournament – that she did in all previous 7 games to that point. Additionally, El Sherbini gave up four strokes in Game 2 and three in Game 3, losing her line completely in exchanges from the graveyard. In all, the Warrior Princess handed her opponent 14 of the 22 points required for El Tayeb to get over the line. El Tayeb grew into the contest, pushing the ball tight into the corners, and was spurred on by the pre-match predictions in favour of her opponent. But with just one winner in Game 3, this was not an encounter El Tayeb won; it was a match El Sherbini lost.
A match like any other
As frustrating as this semi-final defeat would have felt for the Warrior Princess, she’ll take comfort from knowing this was just a momentary meltdown. Importantly for El Sherbini, Games 2 and 3 of the semi-final saw no discernible difference in underlying performance metrics across the court.
In these final two games, El Sherbini hit one in four shots from the mid-court, analogous to her defeat of King; she hit one in five shots on the volley, like she did against Perry; she was drawn forward by El Tayeb on 9.2% of shots, a carbon copy of El Sherbini’s dominant opener against Nouran Gohar; the 60.5% of shots El Sherbini hit from deep in Games 2 and 3 against El Tayeb mirrored the rate in all other games.
El Sherbini took the pace off once every twenty shots, a constant throughout every match, and used the back wall every fifth shot, in line with her tournament average. With average rally lengths of 11.4 shots, this semi-final was no different to any round-robin match.
This chart shows a comparison by ratio in performance metrics between the Games El Sherbini won (1-7, comprising her three group stage matches and the first semi-final Game vs El Tayeb) and those she lost (8-9, that is the final 2 Games of the semi-final)
WTF at the WTF
A loss of concentration? Spotlight rustiness? Who knows. It really was a strange end to an impressive tournament. It took just 18 minutes for the Warrior Princess to go from tournament favourite to elimination. Once the momentum was with El Tayeb, it seemed harder and harder for El Sherbini to arrest the slide. The good news for the Warrior Princess is that this collapse was not symptomatic of a dip in performance across the court. Some defeats provide good learning opportunities; this defeat was just one to forget.