Three bronze medals in squash

JAKARTA: All three Indian racqueteers in squash singles settled for bronze medals in the Asian Games after Saurav Ghosal, Dipika Palikal Karthik and Joshana Chinappa lost their respective semi-final clashes on Saturday.

Ghosal, the top Asian and a silver medalist in the last edition of the Games, appeared to be heading to his second consecutive final but wasted a two-set advantage to lose the men’s singles semi-final 2-3 (12-10, 13-11, 6-11, 6-11, 6-11) to Chun Ming Au from Hong Kong in a cliffhanger.

In the first game, Ghosal rallied remarkably to comeback from 4-9 down at one stage to take the lead.

The second game saw the Kolkata-based lad having a 4-0 lead but Chun Ming was not in a mood to throw in the towel and pushed his rival to the brink. It was a very close contest at 8-8, 9-9 and 11-11 but Ghosal eventually had the last laugh with a winner to take a 2-0 lead in the match.

However, in the third set, from a lead of 6-5, Ghosal lost six points in a row to allow Chung Ming to book his place in the final.

The two women in the fray, Joshna Chinnappa and Dipika Pallikal, also could not win their semi-final matches and added to India’s bronze medal’s tally.

Dipika lost 0-3 (7-11, 9-11, 6-11) to defending champion and former World no.1 Nicol David of Malaysia while Joshana went down 1-3 (5-11, 10-12, 11-5, 10-12) to another Malaysian Sivasangari Subramaniam. IANS