Saurav Ghosal squanders two-game lead, settles for silver

Saurav Ghosal (left)

India’s Saurav Ghosal frittered away a two game lead to go down to Kuwait’s Abdullah Kh Kh H M Almezayen and settled for the silver medal in the men’s squash final in Inchoen, Korea.

Saurav’s bid to win India’s first Asian Games gold medal in squash was thwarted by the 46th ranked Kuwaiti opponent, who rallied splendidly from being two games down to pull through 10-12, 2-11, 14-12, 11-8, 11-9.

The opening game was keenly contested as Saurav warded off the challenge of the 46th ranked Kuwaiti opponent to win 12-10 in 21 minutes. The wheels came off Almezayen’s game in the next game as the eight-time national champion made the most of the latter’s unforced errors and rattled away to a 11-2 win in just six minutes.

Trailing 0-2 and teetering on the brink, Almezayen refused to throw in the towel and brought out his resolve to the fore, waging a grim battle before sneaking through 14-12 in the third game to stay in the contest. The Kuwaiti grew in confidence as the match wore on and played the crucial points better to pocket the fourth game 11-8 to level the scores at 2-2., throwing the contest wide open. The 28-year-old Kolkata-born player had led 7-5 in the decider but ran out of steam to lose 9-11 in a contest that lasted one hour forty two minutes.

Saurav had earlier launched his campaign getting past Jordan’s Alsaraj Ahmad Khaleel Ahmad in the pre-quarterfinal. He subsequently got the better of Pakistan’s Iqbal Nasir in the quarterfinal stage before going on to account for Ong Beng Hee of Malaysia in the semifinals.