Squashing all doubts

As Saurav Ghosal heard the referee utter the word 'stroke' in his favour, the Kolkata lad climbed three to four steps on the side wall of the fibreglass centre court at the Yeorumul Squash Courts on Saturday.

Ghosal isn't an 'antics specialist'. But then, beating Malaysia in the men's team championship to clinch the gold medal isn't 'normal' either. He wanted to celebrate this special victory and hugged his junior teammate Harinder Pal Sandhu, who went rushing into the 'cage'.

The two hugged and jumped inside the court even as the crowd cheered India's historic triumph. With the women's team settling for silver, and Ghosal and Dipika Pallikal clinching individual medals, the squash players signed off with their best-ever medal haul at the Asian Games.

Ghosal played out of his skin to complete a 2-0 win against Malaysia in an energy-sapping contest that lasted two hours and 26 minutes. The World No. 16 bounced back from a game down to eke out a 6-11 11-7 11-6 12-14 11-9 victory over former World No. 7 Ong Beng Hee in a gruelling 88-minute clash.

This was in complete contrast to his final game in the singles where he lost to his Kuwaiti opponent after winning the first two games. But even he knew that the real hero of the day was none other than 25-year-old Sandhu, who got their 'Mission Gold' campaign off to a brilliant start by beating Mohamad Azlan Bin Iskandar 11-8 11-6 8-11 11-4 in 58 minutes.

Smarting a Khanda (the military emblem of the Sikhs) tattoo on his right forearm, Sandhu had moved to Chennai 11 years ago to train at the Indian Squash Academy. It was a cultural shock of sorts.

"I stayed with a friend of my father's, Vijay Aggarwal, for four years, from the age of 14," Sandhu said. "It's been 11 years and today I know my decision to move to Chennai has been justified. It's the biggest day of my life because I helped India win a gold medal," he added.

His opponent, Iskandar, had won the singles title at the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 as well as the singles silver at the Doha Asian Games in 2006.

Sandhu finished his schooling and college in Chennai, and started playing on the professional circuit earlier this year. His current world ranking is 77.

Ghosal, on the other hand, played a high-quality match. He also displayed some other very useful characteristics. He created acute angles with deft use of the side walls of the court and didn't commit the same mistakes which he did in singles final.

"This was certainly not any revenge match. This was another match, another day. And I knew that I will have to be at the top of my game to beat my Malaysian rival. He was very swift on the court," said Ghosal.

"I can't say that I've forgotten that pain, but I've gone a long way in redeeming myself by winning the team gold," he said. "It will help me erase the ugly flashbacks, the nightmares that I've been having over the last four days.

I'm happy."