‘I’ll still give my best for India’

Saurav Ghosal. Pic/Getty Images

India squash star Saurav Ghosal, who announced his retirement from the professional circuit, insists he still has the fire to play for the country a bit longer. And with the workload of playing the pro circuit off his shoulders, he is now keen to devote his time in creating processes and systems to elevate the value of coaching and expertise that are made available to the next generation.

"Playing in the PSA [Professional Squash Association] takes around 20-25 weeks a year. That's a lot of workload, while playing for India is possibly twice or thrice a year at events like the World teams, Asian teams and Commonwealth Games.

"My body and mind is still there, having played at the highest level for 21 years, but now I need to figure out how to pace my training in a way to be as sharp as possible to produce results for India. I'll give my best and still produce results for India," Kolkata-based Ghosal, 37, told mid-day on Tuesday.

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Aspirations for the future

The multiple-time Asian Games and Commonwealth Games gold medallist, who also bagged gold at the 2022 World Doubles Championships in the mixed doubles category at Glasgow, is also keen to prepare the next generation of Indian squash stars. "I won't be coaching every day of the year at this moment, but I want to help certain players who are in the high performance category. As far as little kids are concerned, my value additions will be creating processes and systems at the grassroots level which elevates the value of coaching and expertise available to them. I want to devise a program where kids are able to graduate into becoming top players. I want to spend time going to schools, especially in smaller cities. This decision [professional retirement] gives me a bit more time to be able to do all that," added Ghosal, who has won 10 PSA titles having reached 18 finals and winning 281 of his 511 matches on the pro circuit.

Olympics remain a dream

An Olympic medal though will be sorely missed by Ghosal as the sport has finally earned a spot at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. "It's always been a dream to be an Olympian. Only if the Olympics [inclusion] had happened a bit earlier...

I could've won a medal and that would've been the cherry on the cake. But we [squash] did get in finally and are grateful," added Ghosal, who also holds a record 13 National titles and is the only Indian men's player to reach the world's Top 10 ranking, having achieved the career-high in April 2019.