Dinky-dinky: The Saurav Ghosal shot that wowed an artsy Nantes crowd

First, a little about the kind of things of amazement that Saurav Ghosal’s audience at the Open de France in the artic city of Nantes, the royal seat of ancient rulers of Brittany, might have been accustomed to seeing daily: a 15 km green line runs across the city, guiding you to some of the craziest mind-bending contemporary sports-arts facilities and installations. There’s a croissant-shaped football field, where a reflective screen mirror inverts perception for those wanting to watch that sport funky. There’s crescent-shaped ping pong tables and basketball hoops where you can shoot baskets at different heights. Giant pots for children to jump in and out of, crooked benches like from Alice’s Wonderland and colossal spiders and mammoth steel elephants that can be walked into.
When India’s top squash player received whooping waves of applause for a fabulous backhand drop shot he played against Mohamed elShorbagy on a beautiful September day – in a losing match, mind you – it came from connoisseurs of a city boasting of some of the most jaw-dropping public art seen in an urban sphere.
Watch video on this link- https://m.facebook.com/PSAworldtour/videos/incredible-finish-from-ghosal/407810958159396/
The Nantes spectators couldn’t stop clapping their wonderment, and the commentators were stunned, moved into a gush: “Oh, it’s outrageous, what a beautiful dinky-dinky…and he made it look so easy, when it wasn’t.”
The dinky-dinky wordsmith once got so smitten an Amr Shabana wry-drop, he went: “That is a juckin, buckin, duckin, wuckin..” Dinky dinky was just as gleeful.
ElShorbagy was a game and 10-8 up in that semifinal at the Maison du Squash and Hangar. 10-8 is 2 game balls up for the Egyptian-English World No 4, a 31-year-old former World Champion and No 1 player who asserts his authority on the court with some thumping power strokes. Ghosal is 35, coming off his biggest achievement, a CWG singles bronze medal earned after years of plodding on the squash court. He’s World No 15 currently, though he peaked at no 10 in April 2019.
Saurav Ghosal (Source: PTI)
Ghosal won his first Commonwealth Games singles medal earlier this summer. The competition at the Games tends to be extremely steep, and for a sport that’s not cracked the Olympics, the CWG medal would count as the biggest in a Games setting. It also crowns a career that doesn’t quite resonate back in his country, where tennis, badminton and TT are the racquet favourites. Not many Indians have watched Ghosal play LIVE. Let alone, drink in the finest of his racquet-craft.
Six of the Top 10 of the world are Egyptians — ElShorbagy only recently switched to playing for England. Nine of the Top 20 too, and if there’s a wicked wizarding wr pulling off mind-blowing angles in that glass cage, it’s more than likely to be of a creative, consummate Egyptian, pickled to perfection in this sport.
Ghosal is one of the shortest – if not the shortest – among top players on the PSA pro circuit. He makes up for that height disadvantage being one of the speediest on the Tour. He has a tap-dancer’s assured but lyrical footwork around the wooden floor. But it’s on those 3-dimensional glass walls tapestrying into the floor that’s unique to what constitutes a court in this sport, which Ghosal brings the grandest quality to his game style — accuracy. In a world of physicality-prizing specimens, he brings the deft touch.
Ghosal grew up revering Egyptian legend Amr Shabana, whose supple wrs could string the crazy ball in such awe-inspiring directions at unguessable angles that he was an art with standalone beauty in his game, never mind the world-beating achievements. Think Federer in squash. In fact, stay on with the Federer oeuvre. Because tennis’ greatest art had just shocked the world with his retirement decision, and Ghosal a massive fan was processing his feelings about a Federer-less tennis world.
Tribute to federer
So what better tribute than an exquisite back-hand drop, which is hit with the most nuanced racquethead angle from the centre, with a delicately balanced back-swing, which strikes the front wall low, and goes into squash’s magical straight-lined blackhole – the nick, from where the ball rolls off the sidewall to plunge to it’s death kill. The most surreal winner. The nick is the straight line joint where the frontwall and floor meet at the sidewall. It’s a unique magical spot, and the ball would subtly change trajectory, bounce off to hit the nick and sweetly roll down.
Think Nolan’s Inception and its geometry-bending, surface-shifting, gravity-mocking dreamy architecture for how the beautiful drop left elShorbagy grasping at air. elShorbagy was lunging and stabbing at a mirage, and the Egyptian would know a thing or two about desert sands and shining illusions.
Saurav Ghosal’s beautiful backhand drop was an earworm from a dant birdsong. A proper lover’s sigh. The French at Nantes knew it was pretty special. (Representational image)
Ghosal’s backhand drop – dinky-dinky if you will – left the spectators mesmerised. On a loop on YouTube, it’s still breathtaking. Even if elShorbagy had been waiting right there the sidewall, his racquet poised, for a hundred years, the rolling nick would have been unretrievable, and that’s the helpless gorgeousness of this shot. The beautiful backhand drop was an earworm from a dant birdsong. A proper lover’s sigh. The French at Nantes knew it was pretty special.
Go back a few frames. Or many frames even. Ghosal was in a trance that day. Electronica trance at 6-3 in the opening game in fact. He had played a long superb rally when he bared his wr for a oh-so-delicate forehand winner on the right side of the front wall, getting the spectator’s immediate attention. “Len to that, len to that,” the commentators would urge, as the crowd went wild.
But it was in saving the two game balls at 10-8, that he would own those present for life with the drop. Federer loomed on his legend that evening. “He’s one of my biggest sporting heroes. I was sad he was retiring the next day. But I was joyous the backhand came at that point,” he told Express later.
It takes hours and years of practice to get it right – to strike the nick – and India coach Cyrus Poncha says it’s a testament to Ghosal’s two decades of training and consency, just to earn that adoring raucous applause for a winner. In a losing match – for Ghosal went down 11-6, 12-10, 11-13, 13-11 in 69 minutes. “It was disappointing to not win the match. But in that rally I was at the right place, right time. I had my back against the wall at 10-8. But when I saw that instance, I was pretty confident I could hit the shot. It came naturally to me,” Ghosal said.
It’s a Rubik’s cube frankly – to get it all right. It demands perfect movement on the court, the most taut racquethead control to take the ball early, right position of the footwork and a balance to the three-part swing: back-swing, point of contact and follow through.

🗣”I just wanted to focus on each point and play each point to the best of my ability and Iker is a good player so I’m just happy to win 2-0.”
Indian No.1 @SauravGhosal closes out QF day 1 with a win over Iker Pajares Bernabeu 💪
More reaction here ⬇️https://t.co/CDLeIfym6q pic.twitter.com/R7hAFwtgWm
— PSA World Tour (@PSAWorldTour) September 14, 2022
There are slightest variations to nail the correct angle of the racquet vis a vis where you are positioned, and Ghosal saw the space, got the loose opening at the centre of the court, with elShorbagy in his left rearview.
In fact it was the aggressive punch from the Egyptian (you could sense the power on it in replays), which saw Ghosal respond with an equally aggressive forehand volley drive which packed off elShorbagy to the back right corner. Still, he recovered fast enough and was headed in the right direction sprinting diagonally to the left front wall, when Ghosal pulled off the mic-drop of a squash court.
“It’s important to take the pace off the ball playing the dro. Key is to keep the ball short and stay soft,” Ghosal adds. Also pivotal to this execution is the ‘long connection’ – the amount of time the ball stays in contact with the racquet strings.

“Many things matter. The pace of the ball coming to me, where you get the opportunity to play the drop, how lively the ball is when it comes to where I am.” And how exquisitely he julienned it, to strike the front wall and squirt towards the nick, keeping it at short length.
Ghosal claims he played it a few more times over the course of the match, but what got it bookmarked into PSA’s archives to swoon over, was how well he had executed it. At the end of a hard 36 shot rally to boot to make elShorbagy work hard to merely reach the best seat in the house to admire the dinky dinky from.
Amr Shabana has hit stunners in squash and once his celebrated opponent No 1, Ramy Ashour dropped his racquet to applaud the legend. elShorbagy was conservative – and a wee bit stunned to be honest – in his reaction, and Ghosal quietly got on with bouncing the ball multiple times to start the next rally. 10-9. The crowd at Nantes breathed in this piece of dynamic art.