At the recently concluded 16th World Junior Individual Squash Championship at Chennai, Pakistan's performance was dismal, which highlights some serious challenges that the PSF faces today. None of Pakistan's four players could reach the men's final, while Egypt maintained its domination with Mohamed El Shorbagy becoming the second man in history to win the crown twice after his fellow countryman, Amr Shabana.
Eighteen year-old top seeded Shorbagy from Alexandria, who beat Pakistan's Aamir Atlas Khan by three games to one in the 2008 junior final in Switzerland, took only 36 minutes for a three-straight-games triumph over Malaysian second seed, Ivan Yuen for his historic and memorable feat.
The remarkable success of Egypt's junior players shows that the federation earnestly believes that extensive modern training with emphasis on physical contingencies helps in producing world class players both at junior and senior levels, such as Karim Darwish who is no. 1 for the past eight months in senior world rankings.
At the tournament, ninth seed, Nour El Sherbini, also from Alexandria, re-wrote international women junior squash history by emerging as the youngest girl (at the age of 13) to clinch the crown in an all-Egyptian final by beating fourth seed, Nour El Tayeb by 3-1 in only 31 minutes.
Pakistan needs to produce players capable of overcoming the odds in next year's championships. In light of the recent disaster at Chennai, the PSF needs to work out a comprehensive plan for grooming young players capable of regaining Pakistan's faded glory.
We have a profundity of talented teenagers in this country and if we groom these potential champions under the supervision of a hard task master, achieving the desired goals will not be such a hard task.
It may be recalled here that the PSF, in 2001, hired the services of internationally renowned coach Rehmat Khan, who moulded his cousin Jahangir Khan into the greatest squash player the world has ever seen, to train the boys here, and after a lapse of 20 years, Pakistan regained the junior team trophy once again in 2002.
When Islamabad hosted the 2004 World junior championships, Pakistan retained the team title and Lahore's Yasir Butt gave an extraordinary performance by entering the individual finals, also for the first time in two decades. He was defeated by Egyptian Ramy Ashour, Pakistan lost the team title to Egypt. Aamir Atlas, who reached the finals in 2008, was again defeated by the Egyptian Mohamad El-Shorbagy, however, Pakistan regained the team trophy in Switzerland Peshawar politics forced coach Rehmat khan to quit in 2005, a great setback to national squash. Rehmat is now the national coach of Kuwait's squash team. It has been downhill since then with limited success for the team.
There is no dearth of promising, talented youngsters in the country and the large number of entries at the under-11, under-13, under-15, under-17 and under-19 events of Punjab Junior Open squash championships, which began in Lahore last week, indicated that there is no lack of eagerness as well.
For the past 12 years we have held no major titles. The Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF), which is heavily relying on the warring squash families of Peshawar in hope against hope of the emergence of a world champion, also carries the heavy responsibility to institutionalise and organise the game for the future of squash in Pakistan.
