Egypt's Shabana soars to US open Semis

Amr Shabana has reached the semifinal of the US Open, the fifth PSA World Series event this year, after he knocked out top-ranked Dutchman Laurens Jan Anjema.In their fifth meeting since January 2006, the fourth seeded Shabana needed 78 minutes to win the match 5-11, 11-6, 11-4, 15-13."Sometimes things don't happen the way you want - he started well, the crowd got behind him and got him pumped up, so I needed to focus, regroup and do it all the hard way," Shabana, the winner of four world open tournaments, told the tournament’s official website."I got back into it, he changed his game plan so I had to come up with a new one myself, it was like a chess game, but it was very tough at the end," added the world number five."Now the crowd favourite is out, maybe I'll be their favourite tomorrow!"In the semifinals, Shabana will meet world number six, Frenchman Thierry Lincou, while the top seed, Nick Matthew of England, will take on his compatriot James Willstrop.The 32-year old Shabana is the only survivor of eight Egyptians competing for $115,000 prize in Philadelphia after Mohamed El-Shorbagy was eliminated in the quarterfinal by Matthew, and six other Egyptians, Omar Mosaad, Hisham Ashour, Tarek Momen, Mohamed Ali Anwar and Wael El-Hindi, Karim Darwish suffered early exits.