Sport - Squash

Ghosal, Bhattacharya in final

CHENNAI: Saurav Ghosal and Ritwik Bhattacharya proved equal to their leading seeds status and set up a final showdown in the PSA-Indian Challenger tourney with clear-cut wins on Friday.

While Saurav showed England’s Chris Simpson the way out with polite hospitality, Ritwik banged the door shut on Harinder Sandhu with a commendable display of measured squash.

Ranked a career-high 39 on the PSA list, Saurav’s brand of squash was a little too good for 62nd ranked Simpson; his lunges were rarely stained by ungainly desperation, drop shots agreed to ‘die’ on the spot with admirable obedience, and even the occasional umpire-induced tantrum by the Englishman failed to jar him out of his ’zone’.

The only period of time when Simpson was in contention was the early phase of the first game. Both players looked evenly matched at 9-9 before Saurav made Simpson map the court in an extended rally that ended with a gentle backhand caress.

The drop landed in the forecourt and bounced barely an inch from the ground as Simpson failed to reach it in time. First game in the bag and with Simpson looking ominously surly, Saurav played it safe and well within himself to rack up the next two. In the other semifinal, seed-shocker Harinder Sandhu was undone by tardiness and temperament. Showing poor movement on court, he ran into Ritwik a number of times and fell victim to schoolboyish outbursts when his obstruction requests were turned down by the umpires.

Ritwik, number 57 on the PSA list, played steadily and excised all flashiness from his game. He exposed the deficiencies in his young rival’s technique, ones that Harinder would be desperate to iron out in the coming days, and sent him scurrying around the court after the ball, a task the Chandigarh lad achieved only with a crucial, result-determining time-lag.

Burdened by a two-game deficit, Harinder forgot the cardinal truism of squash, that there are no short-cuts to winning points and the only way to success, instead, is a gradual assertion of tactical superiority.

Ergo, even though full-blooded smashes and a gorgeous backhand drop did garner him a few stray points, he was no match for Ritwik’s measured and methodical approach on the day.

The results:

Semifinals: Saurav Ghosal (Ind) bt Chris Simpson (Eng) 11-9, 11-6, 11-6; Ritwik Bhattacharya (Ind) bt Harinder Sandhu (Ind) 11-8, 11-5, 11-7.

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