Declan Marshall Gonsalves and Mohamed Anas Imran Beg will make history as the first Indian athletes to compete at the Games. The men’s doubles pair enters the competition with proven international credentials, having secured India’s maiden teqball medal — a bronze at the 2024 World Championships in Vietnam.
Teqball, which originated in Hungary, combines football skills with a specially designed curved table. The sport can broadly be seen as a combination of freestyle football and sepak takraw played on a table tennis-style surface. Gonsalves and Beg have been drawn in Group B and will face Vietnam’s Truong Giang Ba and Anh Khoa Le before taking on the Republic of Korea’s Junsuk Lee and Taebeen Lee at Nagoya City Higashi Sports Center. The quarter-finals are scheduled later the same day, with progression depending on their group-stage results and a repechage route also available.
Teqball is making its Asian Games debut at Aichi-Nagoya, with five medal events — men’s and women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles, and mixed doubles — scheduled from September 17 to 20. Each event features a round-robin group stage followed by knockouts.
India has three teqball athletes at the Games. Beg will also partner Quimcy Dsouza in mixed doubles, while Dsouza will compete in women’s singles. The Asian Games officially run from September 19 to October 4, although some competitions begin before the opening ceremony.
