India’s Declan Marshall Gonsalves and Mohamed Anas Imran Beg bowed out of the medal race in the men’s doubles Teqball competition at the Asian Games after losing both their group matches here on Thursday.
Placed in Group B, the 31-year-old Gonsalves and Beg, 26, both hailing from Mumbai, lost their matches 0-2.
The Indians first lost 10-12 8-12 against Vietnam’s Truong Giang Ba and Anh Khoa Le before going down 4-12 7-12 against South Korea’s Junsuk Lee and Taebeen Lee.
Gonsalves, who started the game five years ago, is the defending national champion in the men’s doubles category for five consecutive years and also won the national championship in the men’s singles in 2025.
At the international level, he has won a bronze medal in the men’s doubles
category at the World Teqball Championships held in Vietnam in 2024. This was India’s first medal in the event.
Beg, on the other hand, remained undefeated from 2021 to 2026 at the domestic level, winning six national gold medals across men’s doubles and mixed doubles categories.
His outstanding domestic record translated into international success when he won a bronze medal in men’s doubles at the 2024 Teqball World Championships in Vietnam.
Teqball is one of the six sports alongside Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Padel, Surfing, BMX Freestyle and Virtual Taekwondo which are making their debut in the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.
Teqball is a dynamic sport, a combination of football and table tennis. The game was invented by football enthusiasts Gabor Borsanyi, Gyorgy Gattyan, and Viktor Huszar in Hungary in 2014.
The first official Teqball World Championships was held in Budapest in 2017.
In Teqball, players use almost every part of their body except hands and arms to rally with a standard size five football across a curved table, divided by a transparent plexiglass.
