Over 100 Pak squash players sitting idle with PSA memberships

KARACHI: A large number of low-ranked players in the country have little use of the membership of Professional Squash Association (PSA) as they don’t get the chance to play international Challenger events.

It has been learnt that players sitting beyond 200 ranking positions find it really hard to play any international major event due to their low rankings.

Pakistan has 129 players with PSA membership, the third in the world of squash after England and Egypt in number.

And from these 104 players are ranked over 200. Therefore few of them have the opportunity to play in only $5000 level events and that too when they are organised at home.

Sadly, Pakistan’s squash authorities focus is on holding more and more high-prized events and they have gone to the level of organising even $50,000 level Bronze category events – completely useless for even top players of the country.

That was the reason that the name-entry of 100 plus low-ranked players in international events prove futile as they never make it to the main draws of such events because only top ranked players have access to that place.

And if by chance they enter into the main draw of any PSA Challenger event abroad, they don’t play because of financial constraints and consequently withdraw.

This ‘withdraw’ issue became quite a nuisance for the organisers of international squash events that they started taking strong measures against such Pakistani players.

On the backdrop of this, Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) discussed in detail in their Executive Committee Meeting in 2018 that international organisers had started raising strong reservations/objections against Pakistan and had also started imposing fines/penalties, thus creating embarrassments for PSF.

The federation stated that they enter the names of players in international events after receiving them from their affiliated associations but the associations withdraw their names (most probably on sponsorship issues) which in turn creates lots of problems for the organisers.

The federation then directed its affiliated associations/departments that they must generate funds to sponsor their players, coaches and officials for international events.

The federation also ordered the associations/departments that they must ensure that some surety bond must be obtained from players interested in participating in international events so that they don’t withdraw their names to save the country from embarrassment.

Moreover, to stop this trend of entering names in international events without genuine intention of participation the associations/departments were asked to devise some kind of mechanism.

“I fail to understand why we have so many players with PSA membership when they don’t get playing opportunities. Sadly, we don’t organise events for them in the country,” said Usama Khan, an organiser of international events, while talking to ‘The News’.

Fortunately, he added, the pandemic came to rescue those players and international satellite events started in Pakistan from 2020.

“The federation should not ignore these low-ranked players with PSA memberships and must organise every month a PSA satellite event, otherwise they will not continue with their PSA memberships,” reasoned Usama.