Sun setting on career, Ghosal’s ‘broken’ dreams have a silver lining
Rohit Mahajan in Hangzhou
Saurav Ghosal, in his own words, felt like he’s ‘broken’. It’s the second time he’s felt broken after a final at the Asian Games, but there’s a crucial difference since the last time — when gold slipped out of his grasp at Incheon nine years ago, he was only 28. There was hope yet. Now, at 37, he knows the road ahead is short.
The man to whom he lost the final today, Malaysia’s Eain Yow Ng, is 12 years younger but only one spot higher in the world rankings. When they faced off during the team event, Ghosal had won 3-1, taking the final game 11-3.
It’s the nature of sport — old bodies recover slower, sometimes injuries don’t heal at all, and aches become a part of life. Ghosal was visibly a step — or three! — slower than his younger opponent. Ghosal’s drop shots are still exquisite, the angles he creates with both backhand and forehand still take one’s breath away, but he’s clearly not recovering from tough games fast enough, as fast as younger players such as Eain.
“Right now, it’s broken,” he said, about his current state, physical and mental. “It’s been a hard two weeks.”
Though Ghosal won the first game, for most of it, he was doing the catching-up; there were times when he simply failed to connect with his forehand; when he simply gave up after Eain caught him on the wrong foot. Ghosal trailed all through, from 1-6 until 8-9, before catching Eain at 9-9; then he took the lead for the first time, 10-9, and won the game — a lucky break.
There onward, he said, things unravelled a “little bit” for him — more than a little bit, actually. The margins at this level are wafer-thin, and the greater spring in Eain’s steps proved decisive; the two were neck and neck until 9-9, when Eain pulled away.
In the final two games, it was clear that Ghosal was struggling physically, and that affected his mental state — he knew that he was not going to come back to win this one. He did play some cute drops and crosscourts, but Eain had the pace to chase down almost everything.
Ghosal, though suave and polite as ever, made for a gloomy picture when he met the press to discuss the game. “Things unravelled a little bit for me from the middle of the second game,” he said.
Some weird things happened, said Ghosal. “I tried to deal with it the best I could. He kind of fed off that and played some very good squash and started imposing himself,” he added. “I couldn’t respond… That’s how I lost.”
“Overall, he imposed his game better than I did for the majority of the match, and I couldn’t do that for most of it,” he said, sadly rubbing his jaw.
He said he wasn’t sure if he could have done anything more. “I put in everything,” said Ghosal, who won a bronze at the 2018 Asiad.
This, Ghosal said, was a medal he desperately wanted. “I’m not sure if I’m going to have another shot. It’s the medal that I really wanted,” said Ghosal. The certainty that he’s never going to get it breaks him, inside and out.
