Jakarta Aug 25 (IANS) All three Indian racqueteers in squash singles settled for bronze medals after Saurav Ghosal Dipika Palikal Karthik and Joshana Chinappa lost their respective semi-final clashes at the 18th Asian Games here on Saturday.
Dipika lost 0-3 (7-11 9-11 6-11) to defending champion and former World No.1 Nicol David of Malaysia while Joshana went down 1-3 (5-11 10-12 11-5 10-12) to another Malaysian Sivasangari Subramaniam.
Ghosal meanwhile wasted a two-set advantage to lose the men s singles semi-final 2-3 (12-10 13-11 6-11 6-11 6-11) to Chun Ming Au from Hong Kong in a cliffhanger.
Despite the reversals this is India s best ever show in the Asian Games in squash singles.
In the 2014 Asian Games India won two singles medals -- Ghosal had a silver and Dipika a bronze.
In the first game Ghosal rallied remarkably to comeback from 4-9 down at one stage to take the lead.
The second game saw the Kolkata-based lad having a 4-0 lead but Chun Ming was not in a mood to throw in the towel and pushed his rival to the brink.
It was a very close contest at 8-8 9-9 and 11-11 but Ghosal eventually had the last laugh with a winner to take a 2-0 lead in the match.
However in the third set from a lead of 6-5 Ghosal lost six points in a row to allow Chung Ming to make a comeback.
Dipika on the other hand led 5-2 and 4-1 in the first two games but three-time defending champion Nicol had enough experience to run away with a 11-7 11-9 11-6 win.
The 26-year-old had beaten Japanese Kobayashi Misaki 3-0 in the quarter-finals while Joshana beat Hong Kong s Chan Ho Ling by a similar margin to advance to the last four stage.
At the Asiad both losing semi-finalists bag a bronze and there is no bronze medal play-off.
David has won the Asian Games singles titles four times earlier.

--IANS dm/tri/bg