CHENNAI: Is there enough depth in Indian squash? Though it might appear inappropriate to discuss the issue, the time is right to brace the topic when the five-day Jio-19th Asian individual championship begins at the Indian Squash Academy and Express Avenue Mall here on Wednesday.
The last decade has seen the sport take giant strides, knocking hard on the doors of the Olympics, only to be upstaged by relatively smaller disciplines.
Even now, the talk veers only towards three names — Saurav Ghosal (men) and Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal Karthik (women) and no one else.
After a close perusal of the draw, it looks like this could be Ghosal’s best chance to win his maiden Asian championship gold. Seeded second and ranked 30th in the world, the 30-year-old’s passage has been made easy with the exit of Farhan Mehboob, the eighth seed, as Pakistan had withdrawn from the meet.
“I’ve done better at the Asian Games [winning a singles bronze in Doha 2006 and Guangzhou 2010]. The key is to play my game and keep my head in the right place,” said Saurav on Tuesday while refusing to accept the view that there is ‘brain drain’ in squash. “The depth is good, can’t complain,” he said.
After reaching the quarterfinals of the World women’s championship recently, Joshna is on a high and will be keen to do well here.
Joshna, seeded two, will encounter a tricky opponent in Misaki Kobayashi of Japan in the quarterfinals (third round) after which she will take on third seed Joey Chan of Hong Kong.
Dipika, the poster girl of Indian squash, hasn’t had a great year by her standards, not getting past the second round in any World series event.
Even though Dipika’s world ranking has slumped to 22, the 25-year-old, seeded fourth, revels under pressure and will be keen to script a turnaround at home.
Placed in the top half of the draw, Dipika in all probability will take on the fifth seed Lui Tsz Ling of Hong Kong in the last eight and will then run into the top seed Annie Au of Hong Kong in the semifinals.
In the men’s section, there are quite a few dangerous floaters who are capable of producing upsets. Defending champion and fifth seed Leo Au of Hong Kong and Malaysia’s Mohd. Nafiizwan Adnan, the third seed, will be the dark horses.
Achraf El Karargui, India’s foreign coach, said he has tried his best to imbibe the Egyptian method into the Indians during his nine-month association with the players. Can the Indians show the Egyptian mettle and prevent Hong Kong — Max Lee and Annie, the top seeds in men and women — from making a clean sweep?
