The India No. 1 squash ace Joshna Chinappa put up a gutsy display but it was not enough as she went down 9-11, 9-11, 11-9, 9-11 to the top seed Joelle King in the final of the $25,000 MEML HKFC International 2016 in Hong Kong on Saturday.
This was the biggest career PSA final for the 13th ranked Chinappa, who had upset the second seed and defending champion Annie Au in the semi-finals.
Gruelling four-game encounter
The two players had met twice at the end of last year. In October, Joshna had lost a four-game semi-final to Joelle at the Carol Weymuller Open. In December, they were involved in an even grittier battle in the second round of the Hong Kong Open.
The Chennai girl had started strong in that one but the former World No. 4 came back and enforced a deciding fifth game in which she edged past Joshna.
Quite naturally, their latest meeting at the HKFC International was also supposed to take the same route.
It was predictably a very hard-fought encounter. King managed to narrowly hold off the Indian national champion in the first two games as she took an 11-9, 11-9 lead.
However, the 29-year-old third seed refused to go down in straight games. Using her angular backhands to perfection, she pulled back one game 11-9.
Both the players showed some tremendous athleticism and kept moving each other all over the court in the fourth game. It was the World No. 9 who managed to take a slim lead of 9-8 after which she won two of the next three points to wrap up in 45 minutes.
This was Chinappa’s first PSA final since winning the NSCI Open in September. She had clinched the South Asian Games gold medal in February.
Earlier, Dipika Pallikal and Mahesh Mangaonkar had bowed out from this tournament. While the sixth-seeded Pallikal lost to King in the quarter-finals, Mangaonkar had succumbed to a first round defeat to the third seed Nafiizwan Adnan.
Last year’s men’s runner-up Saurav Ghosal had to pull out even before the event began as he needed time to recover from his right foot injury.
