The Professional Squash Association has acted rather unprofessionally and deprived Pakistan of holding international tournaments due to security reasons. The news has taken squash lovers by complete surprise.

Pakistan recently suffered a great setback when the Professional Squash Association (PSA) refused to give its approval for holding international ranking tournaments in Pakistan due to security reasons, despite the PSF's assurance for providing top security arrangements for foreign participants.

The PSA is a body of professional squash players, which enjoys the power of giving ranking status to international tournaments depending on the prize money. However, one cannot help but find its decision both unkindly and unwisely, considering that squash is an indoor game and not like hockey, cricket or football, which are hard to manage as far as security is concerned.

While on the one hand, one can understand that a major reason for the disapproval must have been the March 5th attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, because of which the two most popular outdoor games — cricket and hockey — have suffered heavily as foreign teams refused to tour Pakistan expressing security concerns and all match venues were shifted from Pakistan to other countries. But on the other hand, squash is a different ball game altogether.

Considering that the Pakistan Squash Federation is headed by Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, under whom security arrangements of international tournaments in the squash complex would not have been an issue, the PSA did not give much weight to this vital and important aspect. Instead, the professional body acted rather unprofessionally and deprived Pakistan, a country that has made invaluable contributions to world squash, of holding international tournaments due to security reasons. The news  has taken squash lovers by complete surprise.

The five annual Pakistani tournaments that have lost their ranking status are Chief of the Army Staff Open, Chief of the Air Staff Open, Chief of the Naval Staff Open (each event carrying a cash prize of $25,000), along with Pakistan Open, a super series event with a cash prize of $80,000, as well as the PSF President Cup ($12,000).

Now, thanks to PSA, no foreign players would participate in the tournaments because they would not be getting any points for improving their world ranking. Because of this decision,   Pakistani players will suffer the most as all the five tournaments will now be domestic events with no international ranking points. It would have been more advisable on the part of the PSA to leave the option open for players to compete in five tournaments in Pakistan instead of delisting them from the world ranking list and depriving them of the right of participation. 

This year's world ranking for the month of May is virtually dominated by  Egyptians, where Karim Darwish stands as world no. 1, Amr Shabana as no. 3, Ramy Ashore as no. 4, Wael El Hindi as no. 10, and Junior World Champion, Mohamed El Shorbagy as no. 18. Besides them, a good number of Egyptians are listed in the top 50. Pakistan's Aamir Atlas Khan and Farhan Mahboob are currently ranked at no. 15 and no. 16 respectively, while Azlan Iskander is at no. 13 and Ong Beng Hee at no. 14. Besides Aamir and Farhan, our seasoned campaigners, Mansoor Zaman and Yasir Butt as well as others have competed in almost all the ranking events held so far in Pakistan.

The world's top 10 players usually compete in major and super series events while the others take part in tournaments where they stand a chance to improve their rankings as well as gain experience by playing against strong opponents. Ranking tournaments in Pakistan provided a good chance not only to our players for improving their world ranking but also to foreign players who had won the tournaments in the past.

It is high time that the PSA revised its decision of delisting international ranking tournaments in Pakistan as there is a strong possibility that players from Egypt, Malaysia, Qatar and other countries would love to compete in Pakistan, more for the love of the game than for any other reason.