(1/4)Asian Games – Hangzhou 2022 – Squash – Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre, Hangzhou, China – September 30, 2023 India’s Abhay Singh in action during the men’s team Gold Medal match against Noor Zaman REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon from Pakistan Acquire license rights
HANGZHOU, China, Sept 30 (Reuters) – India’s squash team celebrated a gold medal win in dramatic circumstances on Saturday when Abhay Singh came back from two match points down to win the deciding game and beat rivals Pakistan in the men’s team final of the Asian Games. .
After a topsy-turvy final that both groups of players described as high-pressure due to expectations at home, Singh recovered from a 10-8 deficit in the decider against Pakistan’s Noor Zaman to win 12-10 and clinch the gold medal, sending his team. teammates and Indian fans among the crowd in ecstasy.
It was sweet revenge for Singh and India, who were defeated by Pakistan on Wednesday in a group round match, in which Singh also lost to Zaman.
“When you lose on tour, you lose for yourself, but when you lose here, you lose for India and that doesn’t feel good,” said Singh, 25, who cried both when he won and when he heard his national anthem on the podium. “I think it takes a lot of character to push yourself and recover from that.
“I think all the shouting, all of India, just pushed me to go. I just want to thank everyone who really shouted for me today.”
Things didn’t start so well for India.
Pakistan’s Nasir Iqbal beat India’s Mahesh Mangaonkar 3-0 in an intense opening match in the best-of-three tie.
Watched by around 200 fans on the temporarily constructed glass-walled pitch, sitting in the middle of a huge convention centre, Iqbal and Mangaonkar constantly interjected and complained to the match officials about the decisions made.
After a clash, Iqbal fell, prompting Mangaonkar to run and check on his opponent.
Iqbal won 11-8, 11-8, 11-2, which was welcomed by some of the locals in the crowd who waved mini Pakistani flags handed to them as they entered. No Indian flags were delivered.
Fans were given blankets to keep warm at the venue, where the temperature was kept between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius at the players’ request, venue staff said.
PLAY AS ROBOTS
After a comfortable 3-0 victory in the second match by India’s top seed Saurav Ghosal over Pakistan’s Muhammad Asim Khan, the tie reached the decisive point, prompting more fans to arrive and the volume to increase.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors, dating back decades, have meant fierce battles on the sporting field.
“There’s obviously a little bit of an added advantage with Pakistan,” said Ghosal, 37, who also won team gold in Incheon in 2014. “So I think the focus for us as a team was to try to rectify some of the mistakes that we committed three days ago.”
“I think one of the things in the Pakistan game last time was that both Abhay and Mahesh got very, very emotionally charged. That’s not the way to face them. The way to face them is to stay calm and… almost have To be robots, literally as if there were no emotion, and it’s almost like that.
“No emotion is almost more powerful than any other outward thing you can show… because then it doesn’t, can’t give them anything to feed on. And I think today, for the most part, they kept that.”
Reporting by Martin Quin Pollard; Clare Fallon edit
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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