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Maharashtra closed squash c’ship: Amravati lad Gadbail proves no match for Mumbai boy Jeh Pandole
Pandole seeded 5/8th in the tournament was the overwhelming favourite going into the contest against his unseeded opponent and the gulf in class between the two was apparent for everyone to see.
Jeh Pandole from Mumbai cruised into the quarter-finals of the boys’ under-17 event with a comfortable 11-2, 11-2, 11-2 victory over Amravati’s Dhananjay Gadbail of the Maharashtra Squash Rackets Association’s (MSRA) 1st Maharashtra closed squash championship 2019 that at iSquash Academy courts, Mundhwa, on Friday.
Pandole seeded 5/8th in the tournament was the overwhelming favourite going into the contest against his unseeded opponent and the gulf in class between the two was apparent for everyone to see. In his own admission, Gadbail felt that he wasn’t duly prepared for the matchup and that his lack of experience is what cost him the win.
Gadbail said, “I’ve only been playing squash for six months so in many ways this was a warm-up tournament for me. My opponent, on the other hand, is a veteran who’s played the sport for a while and I think it was due to my lack of experience as to why I couldn’t give him a fight.”
This was indeed proven to be true as his opponent has been playing the sport ever since he was six-years-old and the experience of competing in several tournaments has made him one of the finest squash players in the state.
On Friday, Pandole made the most of the lack of pace in his opponent and forced him to run all over the court, tiring him out in the bargain. Then, he played the second and third games at his tempo and managed to win a majority of the longer rallies in order to comfortably win all three games by an identical 11-2 scoreline.
In the other matches on the day, unseeded Khauman Singh Bhati knocked out the 5th seed Nikhil Jain in the men’s section 11-8, 11-5, 11-9 to make it to the Round of 16. In the boys under-15 section, 3rd seed Karan Patel eased past Satyajeet Kadam 11-4, 11-1, 11-2 and was joined by the 5th seeded Abhishek Paswan and eight-seeded Krish Khandelwal who earned walkovers in the openers.
On the other hand, the 7th seeded Krish Dembla had to sweat to beat Rushikesh Jamnik 11-2, 11-7, 11-4 and 6th seed Hunarpal Kohli made it an easy day out against Joseph George 11-1, 11-1, 11-2.
