Pakistan third with 46 professional squash players

KARACHI: With 46 PSA members, Pakistan is ranked third in the world with regard to professional squash players, a report from Professional Squash Association (PSA) shows.

England with 13.9 percent players is at the top among the members of PSA.

Egypt with 10.3 percent and Pakistan with 8.8 percent are second and third, respectively.

Australia has 6.8 percent PSA players; Malaysia 5.3 percent; India 3.7 percent; Canada 3.6 percent; France 3.5 percent; US 3.3 percent; New Zealand 3.0 percent; and Hong Kong 2.9 percent.

Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) secretary Amir Nawaz said the reason why this big army of players was not producing results was that there was an overall deterioration of the game of squash in the country. “We are going through a bad patch and no exceptional talent is coming up,” he said when asked about Pakistan players’ performances.

He said they had a rough patch from 2006 till 2012 when they did not get any new talent. “Now we are making a comeback. The new generation of players is expected to produce results in coming five years,” said Amir.

He said the PSF would approach schools and colleges for new talent but these efforts would take some time.

The active PSA members from Pakistan are Abbas Shoukat, Abdul Basit Samad, Abdullah Bashir, Adnan Gul, Ahsan Ayaz, Ammad Fareed, Aqib Hanif, Asim Khan, Asif Khan Kalil, Aurangzeb Mehmund, Bilal Zakir, Nasir Anwar, Danish Atlas, Farhan Mehboob, Farhan Zaman, Faraz Mohammad, Haseeb Gul, Ismail Rauf, Israr Ahmed, Kashif Arif, Kashif Asif, Adil Maqbool, Mahad Javed, Javed Ali, Nasir Iqbal, Bilal Khan, Mohammad Farhan, Ibrahim Noorani, Saqib Yousaf, Shahjahan Khan, Noman Khan, Salman Saleem, Shahid Hussain, Ali Bukhari, Tayyab Aslam, Waqar Mehboob, Yasir Ali Butt, Zahir Shah, and Zeeshan Khan.

The PSA members who have been inactive for some time are Amir Atlas Khan, Ahmed Amin, M Adil, Shoaib Hassan, Nosherwan Khan, Hamza Bukhari, and Yasir Khan.