India’s finest male squash player Saurav Ghosal lost a gruelling five-match battle against world number one Diego Ellias in the pre-quarterfinals of the World Championship.
Ghosal, who last reached the quarterfinals of the premier event four years ago, even had a couple of match balls before going down 11-9 11-4 6-11 3-11 10-12 in a marathon contest on Sunday night.
Ghosal squandered a 2-0 advantage to concede the next two games to take the match into the decider. The 36-year-old could not convert the crucial points and it was anyone’s match at 10-10 in the fifth game. However, the Indian made an unforced error to make it 10-11 before the Peruvian player closed out the match.
Elias, 10 years younger to Ghosal, lauded the Indian veteran after an energy sapping contest. Ghosal had played his first world championship way back in 2005 and has been the torchbearer of Indian squash for the last two decades. “Saurav was playing great squash from the beginning. He had a good game plan against me and I couldn’t figure it out at the start. It took me a couple of games and I’m just very happy I could come back from that because I was under a lot of pressure and I didn’t start in the best way.
“I wasn’t moving great. I think I can improve a lot of things for the next match and just be way more aggressive.