Saurav Ghosal loses in second round of World Championships

Saurav Ghosal (left) in action at the World Championships on Tuesday (image courtesy: World Squash Championships)

World No. 17 Saurav Ghosal’s campaign came to an end at the $325k Men’s World Squash Championships in Bellevue, Washington on Tuesday as he went down to his friend and former World No. 1 James Willstrop 7-11, 7-11, 7-11 in 41 minutes.

Willstrop had been a difficult opponent for the Indian as he had won all the eight matches that the two had contested coming into this match. But the Englishman is now ranked seven places lower than his training partner after coming back from a career-threatening hip injury. That presented an opportunity to the India No. 1 to finally make the breakthrough.

However, Willstrop snubbed Saurav’s chances with yet another measured performance. He took the opener 11-7 in 13 minutes and immediately put Ghosal under a lot of pressure.

The Englishman kept up his confident display and surged to a 10-4 lead in the second game as well. However, the Indian national champion showed his impressive defensive skills and great footwork to take three points on the trot and closed the gap to 7-10. The undeterred Willstrop was still able to wrap up the game 11-7.

The third game was a mirror image of the second where once again James had a lead of 10-4 and Ghosal won three points before Willstrop emerged victorious.

“Saurav’s been in great form and has just beaten Cuskelly who has been absolutely flying. I respect and admire Saurav so much, we train together, and he always seems to play well against me, and seeing him play that well, and I had to play really well to beat him. We’re good friends and we know we can go and play hard squash. We know each other really well, respect each other and I think that helps so we can play good squash,” said Willstrop after the victory.

With this, Indian challenge at the 2015 World Championships comes to an end. World No. 71 Harinder Pal Sandhu was the only other Indian to play in the main draw and he lost in the first round on Sunday.