The Legends: Courtesy – Pakistan Squash Federation
- Geoff Hunt
For over 1000 years man has invented and enjoyed a variety of games played by hitting a ball with either a closed fist – as in “fives” or “bunch of fingers” – or with some form of bat or racket. Around the year 1148 the French played “la Paume”, meaning “the palm of the hand”, which developed into Jeu de Paume, Real Tennis, Royal Tennis or, if you play the sport, simply Tennis. At sometime in the early 19th century this obsession with rackets and balls spawned another variety of the sport in the unlikely birthplace of the Fleet Prison in London. The prisoners in “The Fleet”, mainly debtors, took their exercise by hitting a ball against walls, of which there were many, with rackets and so started the game of “Rackets”. Rackets progressed, by some strange route, to Harrow and other select English schools about 1820 and it was from this source that our own sport of Squash, or Squash Rackets, developed.
Squash was invented in Harrow school around 1830, when the pupils discovered that a punctured Rackets ball, which “squashed” on impact with the wall, produced a game with a greater variety of shots and required much more effort on the part of the players, who could not simply wait for the ball to bounce back to them as with Rackets. The variant proved popular and in 1864 the first four Squash courts were constructed at the school and Squash was officially founded as a sport in its own right.
The first recorded reference to “Squash”, other than in Harrow school, appeared in 1890 in the English book “The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes” written by the Duke of Beaufort. Eustace Miles, a world championship at both Tennis and Rackets, wrote the first book on Squash in 1901; stating that the sport was enjoyed by thousands of players in various parts of the world. By that time there were courts in schools and universities in England and some also in private houses. The first professional Squash Championship was held in 1920 in England, when C.R. Read (Queens Club) beat A.W.B. Johnson (RAC Club).
In 1923 H.A.L. Rudd, writing in “Baily’s Magazine”, forecast that Rackets would lose many players to Squash with the arrival of the first English Amateur Championships. He was concerned at this prospect as he considered Rackets to be a “manlier” game; Squash afforded a good “sweat” but did not demand the same skill as Rackets, in his opinion. Rudd’s forecast proved to be only too correct as Squash grew rapidly and soon left its parent sport far behind in popularity.
As Squash play developed so did its administrative structure. The first discrete national associations to be formed were the United States Squash Racquets Association in 1907 and the Canadian Squash Racquets Association in 1911. In England the game was regulated by a Squash sub-committee of the Tennis and Rackets Association from 1908 until it gained full status as the Squash Rackets Association in 1928.
A court built at the Bath Club in London at the beginning of the 20th century was chosen as the model for the standard size of a Squash court, 32 feet by 21 feet or 9.75 meters by 6.4 meters, much smaller that the court for Rackets which measures 60 feet by 30 feet (18.3 meters by 9.1 meters). The British dimensions were proposed in 1911, but not ratified until 1923. The point a rally scoring system to 15 was used universally in Squash until 1926 when the current hand in, hand out system to 9 points was introduced outside North America. The American hardball game, however, continued to be played to 15 points and this system was also adopted for the men’s professional circuit in 1991 in an effort to shorten the matches.
In 1933 the great Egyptian player F.D. Amr Bey, won the first of his five British Open Championships, then seen as the World Championships. He was followed in his achievement by M.A. Karim of Egypt who won the title four times from 1947 to 1950 and then the dominating Khan dynasty from Pakistan; Hashim (1951 1958), Roshan (1957), Azam (1959 1962), Mohibullah (1963), Jahangir (1982 1992) and Jansher (1993 1994).
The Women’s British Open commenced even earlier than the Men’s, with Miss J.I. Cave winning the title in 1922. Until 1960 the title belonged solely to English players, with Janet Morgan (Shardlow) winning 10 times between 1950 and 1959. She was followed by the most famous woman Squash player ever, the Australian Heather Blundell (McKay), who won the title 16 times and dominated the sport from 1961 to 1979 – remaining undefeated throughout her playing career. Significant and multiple successors were the New Zealander, Susan Devoy, who won the title 8 times between 1984 and 1992, and the Australian, Michelle Martin, who won the title 6 times from 1993 to 1998.
Perhaps the players who had the most impact on the development of the sport were Jonah Barrington (Ireland) and Geoff Hunt (Australia). They dominated Squash between the late 1960′s and early 1980′s, capturing the imagination of sportsmen and women everywhere and starting a boom in the sport which raised the number of courts to 46000 worldwide and the number of players to over 15 million by 1994.
With the establishment of a Professional Tour, to which clubs were encouraged to send their teaching pro., a list of world famous names acquired US titles from the mid-fifties – Hashim Khan (4 wins), Mahmoud Kerim (4), Mohibullah Khan (5), Sharif Khan (9), Mark Talbott (5), Jahangir Khan (2) and Jansher Khan (3).
The North American players were also the first to appreciate the virtues of Doubles Squash, with the hardball being used on a court measuring 45 feet long by 25 feet wide. The first National Doubles Championships were held in 1933 and Hardball Doubles continues to thrive even though the singles version now holds only a minority of play.
Squash spread rapidly in its early days and the major growth areas were wherever British forces were stationed. South Africa, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries learned their Squash from the military and soon adopted it as their own. Probably the most successful Squash nation of all time, Australia, had its Squash seed planted through contact with the military.
Although the first Squash courts in Australia were established in 1913, at the Melbourne Club in Victoria, there was no official Squash association until 1934 although top players had been engaged in ad hoc club tournaments since 1927. But it was in the 1960s that Squash started to really take off in Australia. Greater commercial development came into the sport and public Squash centers were built all over the country, bringing the game to a much wider audience. This growth brought amazing international success with many of the world’s best players coming from the Australian Squash scene. Heather McKay, Ken Hiscoe, Geoff Hunt, Vicki Cardwell, Steve Bowditch, Rhonda Thorne and, more recently, Michelle and Rodney Martin all become World Squash Champions at senior level and Peter Nance, Chris Robertson, Robyn Lambourne, Sarah Fitz-Gerald and Rachael Grinham achieved the same distinction at junior level. Hunt was World Champion 7 times and won 8 British Open titles while Heather McKay was the most successful Squash player of all time, being undefeated in international competition for an astounding 19 years.
In 1976 the headquarters of the SRAA were transferred to Queensland and merged with the Australian Women’s SRA to form the ASRA in 1986, its name being changed to Squash Australia in 1990.
In Germany Squash was born twice! Its first cradle was in Berlin in 1930 when the first four courts were built by Dr. Ernst von Siemens, head of the technology department of the electronics company which bore his name, and he started regular company staff activities and even foreign competitions on the “wall-play-halls”. Other courts followed, but during wartime they were all used for a variety of other purposes and it was not until 1978 that the Siemens courts were again used by the “Berlin Wallball Game Club”.
The initiative for the rebirth came from Christhof Viscount Vitzthum who had discovered the sport in Australia, heard about the Siemens courts by accident and started to promote Squash and bring the courts back into use. But an even earlier start had been made in Hamburg by a merchant, Henning Harders, who erected three courts following an infection by the Squash bug in Australia and it was a group of Hamburg players who founded the German SRA in 1973 and sent a team to the European Team Championships in Stockholm in 1974.
Two years after the German SRA was founded the first National Championships were held and within a few years there were over 6000 courts and 2 million players in the nation – the most spectacular growth of Squash anywhere in the world.
German Squash celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1998 by bringing the Women’s World Championships to Stuttgart.
Many other nations experienced tremendous growth in Squash, starting slowly in the 1960s and 1970s, but then gaining momentum over the past thirty years. In each country the basic story is the same: a group of enthusiasts starts to play and promotes the game which, because of its inherent qualities of intense exercise coupled with all-absorbing competition, grows rapidly and becomes a major sport in the land. The formula which made Squash grow in its traditional homelands is now being seen again in the Czech Republic, Poland, Malaysia, Japan, Brazil, Colombia, Korea and many new Squash nations, worldwide.
Pakistan: The Birthplace of Champions
Of all the nations where Squash is played, Pakistan is the greatest enigma, producing a succession of amazing Squash champions from a country where there are still less than 500 courts. No history of Squash can be complete without an account of the amazing exploits of the Khan dynasty, starting with Hashim who won the first of his seven British Open titles in 1951 at the age of 35 years. Hashim was the first of a line of great Pakistani Squash Champions – Azam Khan, Mohibullah Khan, Roshan Khan, Aftab Jawaid, Gogi Alauddin, Mo Yasin, Qamar Zaman, Mohibullah Khan Junior, Hiddy Jahan and the two greatest players of the 1980s and 1990s, perhaps of all time, Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan. Jahangir, now Emeritus President of the World Squash Federation, dominated the sport for 14 years, winning the British Open 10 times and the World Open 8 times and was undefeated for 5½ years. Jansher took over his mantle in 1989 with the first of his World Open titles and began a debate in the sport about which JK was the greatest of them all.
Squash made its first bid to be included on the Olympic Program for the Barcelona Games in 1992 and under the leadership of Presidents Tunku Imran and Susie Simcock continued the campaigns for Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. During this time there was no formal procedure for gaining admission to the Games and the process of lobbying was frustrating and occult in nature.
With up to 12 sports vying for limited opportunities for entry, a more disciplined method of modification and selection for the program was required. This came about with the appointment of Jacques Rogge as the new IOC President, in succession to Juan Antonio Samaranch. Under his leadership a formal bid process was instituted for selection for the 2012 Games, eventually used to vote for London in 2012. Five sports, including Squash, were selected to go through a rigorous examination process and in 2005 the IOC Session in Singapore was given the opportunity to vote on the shape of the program. The first series of votes resulted in Baseball and Softball being eliminated from the 2012 program and this, theoretically, created a space for two new sports. After a close and tense series of votes, Squash and Karate were voted ahead of Rugby Sevens, Golf and Roller Sports as the delegates’ choice, but protocol demanded that a vote was then taken to grant the chosen sports Olympic status. Neither Squash nor Karate secured the two-thirds majority necessary and consequently the London Games were confirmed with a reduced compliment of sports.
With the experience of 2005, the IOC created an even more formalized process for the selection of the program for 2016. In its early days international Squash was controlled by the Squash Rackets Association of England and the United States Squash Rackets Association, but in 1966 representatives of the sport from Australia, Great Britain, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, USA, Canada and the United Arab Republic met in London and agreed to form the International Squash Rackets Association (ISRF), the first meeting of which was held on 5 January 1967.
The ISRF continued to thrive and was amalgamated with the Women’s International Squash Federation in 1985. In 1992 the name of the Federation was changed to the World Squash Federation (WSF), finally recognizing that the sport had been universally referred to simply as “Squash”, rather than “Squash Rackets”, for most of its existence.
Squash is played in some 185 countries, on nearly 50,000 courts, and the WSF now has 150 Squash playing National Associations in membership. It is the sole International Federation for the sport, as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and maintains responsibility for the Rules of the Game, Court and Equipment Specifications, Refereeing and Coaching. The WSF maintains a World Calendar of events, organizes and promotes World Championships for Men, Women, Junior Men, Junior Women and Masters age groups in both singles and doubles Squash; and leads its Member Nations in program for the development of the sport.
Squash has been played for over 140 years, grown sensationally in the last forty and is now poised to become one of the largest and best loved of all sports.
By Ted Wallbutton – Courtesy: WORLD SQUASH FEDERATION
Video to be placed in Sport Section: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTjr-vhL9Cc
