Two games down. 8-10 down. Two match balls against her. Anahat Singh's dream of an Asian Games final, and the Los Angeles Olympics spot that comes with winning said final, seemed to be going up in smoke.
But then, Anahat decided to do something about it. From 8-10 down, she took the third game 12-10, and from then on, her opponent, the higher ranked world number six Satomi Watanabe was rattled. Whether it was the purity of her stroke-making, the clarity in her decision-making, or just the fluidity of her movement, Anahat leveled up and produced what she called "the best win" of her life.
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She's 18. She was two match balls down. And then she leveled up. In Gen Z parlance, that would be called being built different. This teenager from Delhi really is built different to any Indian squash player we've seen in recent times: She is now the first Indian to reach an Asian Games women's singles final in squash, only the second Indian at all to reach an Asian Games singles final, after the great Saurav Ghosal (Abhay Singh made it three about an hour after Anahat's win).
That is a tremendous achievement, and now there's one step to go. At times, though, the journey is as worthy of celebration as the destination itself.
This was no fluke upset. The first two games might have gone against Anahat - 9-11 and 11-13, but at no point in either of those games did she look like she was inferior to Watanabe in any way. She went toe-to-toe, point-for-point. She got done by some extremely good attacking shotmaking on the big points, but those are things you expect from the world's sixth-best player, and Asia's second-best.
That's what Anahat's coaches told her too. "To be honest, they just kept pushing me and telling me that 'you're doing well, you're doing well,'" she told World Squash after the game.
In fact, before the comeback began, the only time Anahat looked like she was a step behind Watanabe was in the third game, when she trailed 4-7, 5-8 and 8-10, as Watanabe's attacking strokes made Anahat look a bit slow, but then, she somehow found the reserves for a serious fight.
One more fight. One more step towards GOLD. ��
Two games and three match balls down, #TeamIIS Anahat Singh fought back to beat World No. 6, Japan's Satomi Watanabe 3-2 and book her place in the Women's Singles Final! ��#TeamIIS #AsianGames #JeetegaIndia #CraftingVictories ���� pic.twitter.com/G0K7bRYHXM
- Inspire Institute of Sport (@IIS_Vijayanagar) September 26, 2026
From 5-8 down, she took seven of the next nine points on offer and gave herself a lifeline. At 10-10, there was a big refereeing call going her way too, as the umpire called a stroke to Anahat, and left Watanabe miffed. But it still was just a lifeline in that moment for Anahat, because she still had so much work left to do, and Watanabe would fight, just like Anahat was fighting. But Anahat showed that she has the ability to up her game in clutch situations.
6-6 in the fourth game it was, when she reeled off five points in a row to win it and level the tie up. Anahat did so with some incredible shot-making, a mix of drops and lobs that, at times, left Watanabe swishing at thin air, as the squash ball was landing where Anahat ordered it to.
Watanabe had no answers, as she was bound by the spell that Anahat was casting. In the fifth game, Anahat only let three points get away from her, as she made it to her first-ever Asian Games final.
That final - against the best Asian player on the squash tour, Malaysia's Sivasangari Subramaniam - will be a serious test. Just a couple of weeks ago, Sivasangari beat Anahat with ease at the London Squash Classic. Once again, she stands in Anahat's way, as two huge prizes loom on the horizon - an Asian Games gold medal, and a spot in squash's debut at the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
Back in March, before defending her India Open title, she had said her main aim for the year was an Asian Games gold. "That's the first step that if I'm able to, qualify through the Asian games, it would be really, really amazing." She had planned her season around these Asian Games, and the World Junior Championship which she won in July.
"I'm just going to put my 100% until the Asian Games comes up," she had said back then, "and maybe we can relax a bit after that ends. The Olympics is what my main goal is but whether squash was a part of the Olympics or not, my aim was to get an Asian games medal. Now it's gone from a medal to a gold."
Within a span of around 20 minutes, Anahat Singh breathed new life into her Asian Games, and with that, into her Olympic dream. She's not favourite in the final, but at two games down and 8-10 down in the semifinal, she wasn't favourite there either.
"My mentality was that anything is possible on a stage like this," she said after the win. And that's the same mindset she will have in Sunday's final. Anything is possible. One win is all that stands between Anahat Singh and her Olympic dream.