Saurav Ghosal and Harinder Pal Sandhu played their hearts out against tough Malaysian opponents and won 2-0 in the best-of-three men's squash title contest to provide India with their second gold of the day in the 17th Asian Games here today.
Sandhu pulled off a shocker when he upset Mohd Azlan Iskandar, who had won the singles gold four years ago at Guangzhou, in four games after playing like a man possessed.
Sandhu played some very good shots from the forecourt and used the side walls beautifully to carve out a 3-1 victory (11-8, 11-6, 8-11, 11-4) in two minutes under an hour to give India a great 1-0 start.
Top seed Ghosal, who had squandered the gold medal after holding a commanding 2-0 lead and a match-ball in the third to Kuwait's Abdullah Almazayen earlier in the week, then fought tooth and nail to make a comeback from 0-1 down and get the better of Malaysian veteran and former world no 7 Ong Beng Hee 3-2 to help India snatch the gold medal.
Ghosal won 6-11, 11-7, 11-6, 12-14, 11-9 after an 88-minute marathon battle where no quarters were given and none asked for by either rival.
Ghosal dropped the opener in 17 minutes after scores were level at 5, and then won the second in 12 minutes after taking a commanding 8-3 lead and levelled the set scores.
The Kolkata-born looked in good touch as he raced to win the third in just 12 minutes when world no 35 Beng Hee made a fightback.
From 4-all, the Malaysian held the lead which he did not relinquish till 11-all and then held match-ball at 12-11 but lost the game in extra points as he had done in the third game against Abdullah two days ago.
However, he was determined this time around he would not allow the prize to slip away and though Ong Beng Hee tried hard to unsettle him, the Indian managed to stave off the danger and went to match-ball at 10-8.
The Malaysian saved one point but then found no answer to the second.
Later Ghosal said he was glad that in the team championship he could do what he could not achieve in the individual gold medal contest on September 25.
"I wanted to win this for the team after losing the final earlier. It was a tough game but I am glad I could achieve it," said the world no 16.
