Ghosal delights home crowd with Mumbai win

Mumbai: Indian ace Saurav Ghosal, who is one of the country's medal prospects for the ensuing Commonwealth Games, warmped up for the quadrennial extravaganza by winning the Professional Squash Association (PSA) Vedanta India Squash Open tournament.

In the final at the National Sports Club of India courts, the home hero beat Swtizerland's Nicolas Mueller 11-9, 5-11, 6-11, 11-7, 12-10 to clinch the PSA M35 tournament.

For the records, it was Ghosal's first title since the CCI International in November, where he also beat Mueller to the title.

Ghosal had recently jumped five places to No 14 to become the highest ranked Indian in the latest PSA rankings.

Happy to have achieved my career high ranking of 14 this month :) going in the right direction & hopefully there is still a lot more to come! pic.twitter.com/h56GzI1OdV

— Saurav Ghosal (@SauravGhosal) February 1, 2018

But, the 31-year-old, found himself 1-2 down against an inspired Mueller but managed to dig in during a thrilling fourth game to take the match to five, before showing nerves of steel to come through a last game tie-break, when he saw two match ball opportunities go to waste, to take the title.

"It was a ridiculous match," said Ghosal.

"Nici has been playing well and I have been watching him all week - today he got so many tough balls back and countered so well.

"I was 2-1 down and I had to come out in the fourth and tighten up a little and be a bit more precise in terms of what I'm trying to do. Then in the fifth, at 10-10, it is anyones game to win - thankfully on this occasion, it was me who came out on top."

(With PSA inputs)

Result - Final
[1] Saurav Ghosal (IND) bt [2] Nicolas Mueller (SUI) 3-2: 11-9, 5-11, 6-11, 11-7, 12-10 (67m)