Engineer, marketing planner, content editor: India’s teqball crew at 2026 Asian Games

CHENNAI: The name doesn't ring a bell at all nor there any trailblazing tales. Teqball it is. And the game is part of the Asian Games to be held in Nagoya from September 19 to October 4. The sport and its sportspersons are shrouded in a veil of mystery. They come from obscure and varied backgrounds. If one is a digital marketing planner, the other is a content manager and one is an engineer — a motley crew that will represent India in Nagoya. They are professionals and athletes. Juggling their work and game, they found their way into Asian Games.

But before the players, the sport needs an introduction too. Teqball, founded in Hungary around 2014, is a fast-growing sport that combines the agility of football and nuances of table tennis. Played on a curved TT table with a football, each match is decided by a best-of-three sets, with the first to get to 12 points winning the set. Much like table tennis, it is played in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles categories. And similar to football, the players are not allowed to use their arm or hand to return or serve the ball.

The sport first came to India around 2018-19, but COVID came as a setback. In the last few years, however, teqball has started to take wings in cities, and a late addition to the Asian Games in February 2026 meant India will take part in three categories. The players are Anas Baig, Declan Gonsalves and Quimcy Dsouza.

All three grew up with their love for football in Mumbai, and at some point, they were introduced to teqball, and it stuck with them. With time, they fell in love with the sport so that they are juggling their work, families and day-to-day life while not just playing but also training, coaching and creating a community for teqball. Baig is a digital marketing planner, and Gonsalves works in content and operations for a website in Mumbai. D'souza, who lives in Bengaluru, works as a test engineer at Decathlon.

While the magnitude of the occasion has not sunk in for the athletes, the excitement among the three is palpable as train for the Games in Mumbai. "We started this sport back in 2022," Quimcy tells this daily. "At that time, if anybody had told us we're going to participate in the next Asian Games in 2026, I think none of us would have believed it. We started this sport when nobody knew it, honestly. For the last four years, we haven't been seen. We are doing this for the love of the game. Recognition will follow, and it will have its own time for sure. But it's not sunken. We're still super excited about it," she adds.