Terence Bosson did his level best to wrestle one of the host nation’s most sought after gold medals from Ravinder Singh in the men’s 60kg Greco Roman final this evening, but in the end the 25-year-old had to be satisfied with silver as the hero of Delhi proved just too strong.

Bosson, who had fought his way to the gold medal match with two clean wins this morning, made a bold attempt to turn the Indian favourite. But Singh simply turned the tables on his English opponent and held the adopted north easterner flat on his back to win with a fall.

Singh leapt to his feet to celebrate as Bosson shook his head, still prone on the mat. There were cheers all over town and the Indian fans rose to their feet in the crowd. Bosson was left reeling.

But the former South African was always going to find it tough against a man who has won three Commonwealth Championship titles at this weight since 2005, and had the support of a large and noisy crowd come to cheer on their home-town favourite.

“You don’t worry about the noise, you just focus on your game,” said Bosson.

“I thought I could win but the first round put me off. He drained me of a lot of energy and that made it hard.

“But I am proud of what I’ve done. It’s been a good experience but he was very hard and aggressive. It was tactics against tactics.”

Earlier in the day, Bosson enjoyed a 13-1 victory over Pakistan’s Sarmad Afaq and then pinned 2009 Commonwealth Championships bronze medallist Marius Zacharias Loots of South Africa to win by a fall in the semi-finals.

Winning silver was reward, not only for today’s efforts, but half a life-time of hard work.

Bosson has won 26 South African titles, the first aged just 14, but he switched allegiance to England in 2006. He qualifies thanks to his father, who was born Windsor, and has lived in Newcastle for the last four years.

In 2007, he won a bronze at the Commonwealth Championships and this May he took silver at the Europeans. He spent a fortnight each in Russia and Poland to prepare for these Games, training three times a day, five days a week.

“Now I know what it takes to win a medal at a major championships,” he said. “I’ve just got to go back and work even harder.”