Jansher Khan: The Power-Packed Personality of World Squash Arena - - Dominated The World of Squash For More Than 13 Years

Jansher Khan was born on 15 June 1969, in Peshawar, Pakistan. He is a former World No. 1 professional squash player from Pakistan, who is generally considered to be one of the greatest squash players of all time. During his professional career he won the World Open a record eight times and the British Open six times.

Jansher Khan belongs to a family that is known for producing outstanding squash players. His brother Mohibullah Khan was one of the world's top professional squash players in the 1970s. Another elder brother, Atlas Khan, was a highly-rated amateur contender.

Jansher Khan won the World Junior Squash Championship title in 1986. He also turned to professional arena that year. At the time, the men's professional squash arena was dominated by another Pakistani player – Jahangir Khan.

Jansher Khan was totally different in many aspects from Jahangir, who was average height and squat, shy and sober. Jansher Khan was tall, slim, disruptive and humorous. Once he told some Dutch journalists, he was world number one that time), that he was retiring and taking up tennis. They swallowed it hook line and sinker - as did many British newspapers.

In 1986; Jansher Khan was getting hard training in West London. He would line up four or five players and play them one after the other - and beat them all for 3/0. If he stayed on court for three continuous hours, facing world class players, he felt satisfaction. He was firm to beat Jahangir at his own game - fitness.

The two JK's, as they became known, faced each other for the first time in the first round of the Pakistan Open in December 1986 and Jansher Khan took a game off Jahangir. Three months later they again came across in the final of the Spanish open, and once again Jahangir won 3/1. When Jahangir blew up Jansher Khan 9-6, 9-0, 9-5 in the 1987 British Open in April, it was thought that Jansher was just another dreamer. Nobody could even imagine what would be going to happen over the coming year.


The situation started to be unfolded in the Hong Kong Open in September 1987 when Jansher Khan defeated Jahangir in the semi-final. It wasn’t mere victory; but it was as convincing as incredible score-line of 3/0. That momentous win was just the start of eight-match winning streak over the previously invincible Jahangir. In the same month of September Birmingham witnessed once again that Jansher Khan beat Jahangir in the semi-final of the world open and went on to register his name as world champion.

Jahangir took it as challenge and worked hard to reverse Jansher Khan's winning streak in March 1988 and went on to beat Jansher Khan 11 times in their next 15 meetings. Their match in the 1988 World Open in Amsterdam had one historic and memorable feature; the first rally of the first game lasted only for 6 minutes and 15 seconds - and ended in a let.

They met for the last time in the World Open in 1993 and Jansher Khan won 3/1. In all they had faced each other 37 times in competition with Jansher Khan winning 19 times to Jahangir's 18 victories. But on game count, Jahangir led 79 to 74 and on total points had won just 23 points more than Jansher khan.

By 1997 his knees were giving him trouble and his fitness was decreasing. His opponents accused him of blocking access to the ball and constant fishing for penalty strokes. He just managed to hold off the challenge of the emerging Scot Peter Nicol in the 1997 British Open to scrape a 3/2 victory and again there were accusations of blocking that was not penalised by a weak referee.

A year later in the same venue Peter Nicol and his coach Neil Harvey devised a game plan to beat Jansher “tight on the wall into the back corners and no cross courts for the lanky Jansher to volley for winners”. After a long first game, won by Nicol 17-16, Jansher realised that his usual boast "I am fitter, so I win" was no longer true. He gave up and lost the next two games 15-4, 15-5.


The Khan winning era had finally come to an end. From 1951 when Hashim had won his first British Open, Pakistan had been a huge, dominating force in squash for 47 years. Nicol's victory was decisive in more aspects than one; because the Pakistan Squash Federation had become complacent during the supremacy of Jahangir and Jansher Khan; therefore, the junior development programme had not been accurate enough. Where once there had been six Pakistanis in the top ten, this year there is only one Pakistani in the world top 20.


The Jansher-Jahangir rivalry would dominate squash in the late-1980s through to the early-1990s. The pair met total of 37 times in tournament play. Jansher won 19 matches (74 games and 1,426 points), and Jahangir 18 matches (79 games and 1,459 points). This record doesn't include exhibition matches and league matches between them.

With Jahangir reaching the twilight of his career and then retiring, Jansher Khan came to launch himself as the sole dominant player in the game in the mid-1990s. He won a record total of eight World Open titles, the last being in 1996. He chose not to defend his World Open title in 1997 because the event was held in Malaysia, and he had a pending court order in Malaysia relating to maintenance payments for his son, Kamran Khan, following his separation from his Malaysian wife. Jahangir maintained a stranglehold on the British Open up to 1991 (he won the championship 10 consecutive times), but when he finally relinquished the title it was Jansher Khan who claimed it for the next six successive years.

Jansher officially announced his retirement from squash in 2001. He won a total of 99 professional titles and was ranked the World No. 1 for over six years.

Wasim Akram: The Living Legend of Cricket - - Immensely Talented Bowler With Amazing But Controversial Cricketing Career

Wasim Akram was born on June 3, 1966 in Lahore Pakistan. He is broadly renowned as the best and the finest left arm fast bowler that was witnessed by the cricketing world. He was a generously gifted cricketer; who had left his unforgettable marks in the books of cricketing history.

Controversial Career

Wasim Akram was the finest fast bowler of his generation and undoubtedly one of the best among all his predecessors. Even with his genuine pace he had complete control over both outswing and inswing deliveries because of his pin point control of line & length and deadly accurate seam position. He is also credited with being the first to master reverse swing and by the end of his career was producing it almost at will. Therefore, we can say unquestionably that there might be very few skills of the fast bowlers armoury which he did not have at his disposal.

Wasim Akram was one of Lancashire’s most successful overseas players ever. From 1988 to 1998, he led Lancashire’s attack in their Nat West Trophy, Benson & Hedges Cup and Sunday League winning sides. He was too good that local fans used to sing “Wasim for England”.

With a very deceiving ball-concealing action; Wasim Akram was exceptional with a very effective bouncer and an equally destructive Yorker. In companionship with Waqar Younis, he terrorised international batsmen in the 1990s. In 1992 irritated with the great performance against the English batsmen; the English press started accusing them of ball tampering. Wasim Akram brought a defamation action against the two former English cricketers, Allan Lamb and Ian Botham, responsible for all that and won sizeable damages. The two W’s continued to exhibit and improve the art of reverse swinging a cricket ball. The ball tampering accusation continued to hurt both bowling greats; a situation that was not helped when Wasim Akram’s mentor , Imran Khan, later disclosed doing with balls using a bottle top during his career but only in practice matches.

More severe allegations came later in his magical career. Especially at 1996 Cricket World Cup, a number of opponent players suspected that Wasim Akram, along with team-mates Salim Malik and Ijaz Ahmed, had attempted to fix the results of insignificant matches. All of three players were suspended by an interim inquiry of the Pakistan Cricket Board, but later they were vindicated and reinstated. Further match fixing allegations against the Pakistan cricket team cropped up again in 1999, while Wasim Akram was captain, but once again the accusations remained unproven.

He was the natural successor to Imran Khan as Pakistan’s leader and captain, but the match-fixing controversies of the 1990s hurted him, blunting his edge and dimming his luster. Never been a true all rounder (he averaged only 23.62 with the bat), he was sometimes charged of being sluggish with the bat. He made his critics silent in October 1996 when he piled up a massive 257 out of a total of 553 against Zimbabwe at Sheikhupura.

One Day Success

Wasim Akram is considered the greatest bowler of any kind in one-day international cricket. He was also the first bowler in cricketing history to take more than 500 wickets in one-day internationals. A fast and furious bowler at the start of a game, he proved himself as the most deadly towards the end when he could get the old ball to reverse swing. His swinging Yorkers or toe-crushers were matchless and earned him a amazing number of wickets.

Wasim Akram was involved, more than any body else, in Pakistan’s famous World Cup victory in 1992 in Australia. He also headed Pakistan with success on numerous occasions. The peak points of his captaincy were the 1994 victory in the World Series in Australia and in 1999 World Cup, when Pakistan reached the final for the second time. The reverse side of his captaincy being the World Cup 1996 in Pakistan and India, when he had to pull out of the crucial quarter final match against India, due to a shoulder and back injury. Critics again alleged him of having done this to make illegal monetary gains.

He was Pakistan’s top bowler in the 2003 World Cup taking 19 wickets in 7 matches. After the 2003 World Cup when Pakistan failed to reach the super-eight round, eight players were fired by the Pakistan Cricket Board including Wasim Akram himself, and Waqar Younis , Shahid Afridi , Abdul Razzaq , Saqlain Mushtaq , Azhar Mahmood and Inzamam-ul-Haq.

Retirement

Wasim Akram retired in 2003, after a brief spell with Hampshire County Cricket Club in England. Controversies still loved to follow Wasim Akram and he has been recently accused of buying a car and then not paying for it and was sued for having modelled in a Indian Whisky advertisement, and coaching at the Indian cricket team in the preparations for a home series against Pakistan.

Wasim Akram was married to Huma Mufti, daughter of Mr. Humayaun Mufti. Huma and Wasim have two sons, Taimur and Akbar, from their married life of 10 years. She left him alone on 25^th October 2009 due to heart and kidney complications and laid to rest on October 26, 2009 at DHA graveyard at Lahore.

International Record

In his test career, Wasim Akram took 414 wickets (a Pakistani record, and 7th all time) at an excellent average of 23.62 and scored 2898 runs at an average of 22.64. In one-day internationals Wasim Akram was again a force to be reckoned with taking a record 502 wickets in 356 appearances scoring 3717 runs along the way.

Jahangir Khan: All Time Squash Legend - - An Undisputed King of The Game "He Came, He Saw, He Conquer"

Jahangir Khan, was born on December 10, 1963, in Karachi, Pakistan (sometimes spelled "Jehangir Khan") is a former World No. 1 professional squash player from Pakistan, who is considered by many to be the greatest player in the history of the game. During his career he won the World Open six times and the British Open a record ten times. Between 1981 and 1986, he was unbeaten in competitive play for five years. During that time he won 555 matches consecutively. This was not only the longest winning streak in squash history, but also one of the longest unbeaten runs by any athlete in top-level professional sports. He retired as a player in 1993, and has served as President of the World Squash Federation since 2002.

Playing Career

Jahangir was coached initially by his father, Roshan Khan, the 1957 British Open champion, and then by his cousin Rehmat Khan, who guided Jahangir through most of his career. Ironically, during his earlier years, Jahangir was a sickly child and physically very weak. Though the doctors had advised him not to take part in any sort physical activity, after undergoing a couple of hernia operations his father let him play and try out their family game.



In 1979, the Pakistan selectors decided not to select Jahangir to play in the world championships in Australia, judging him too weak from a recent illness. Jahangir decided instead to enter himself in the World Amateur Individual Championship and, at the age of 15, became the youngest-ever winner of that event.

In November 1979, Jahangir's older brother Torsam Khan, who had been one of the leading international squash players in the 1970s, died suddenly of a heart attack during a tournament match in Australia. Torsam's death affected Jahangir profoundly. He considered quitting the game, but decided to pursue a career in the sport as a tribute to his brother.

Five-year Unbeaten Run

In 1981, when he was 17, Jahangir became the youngest winner of the World Open, beating Australia's Geoff Hunt (the game's dominant player in the late-1970s) in the final. That tournament marked the start of an unbeaten run which lasted for five years and over 500 matches. The hallmark of his play was his incredible fitness and stamina, which Rehmat Khan helped him build-up through a punishing training and conditioning regime. Jahangir was quite simply the fittest player in the game, and would wear his opponents down through long rallies played at a furious pace.


In 1982, Jahangir astonished everyone by winning the International Squash Players Association Championship without losing a single point.

The unbeaten run finally came to end in the final of the World Open in 1986 in Toulouse, France, when Jahangir lost to New Zealand's Ross Norman. Norman had been in pursuit of Jahangir's unbeaten streak, being beaten time and time again. "One day Jahangir will be slightly off his game and I will get him," he vowed for five years.

Speaking about his unbeaten streak, Jahangir said: "It wasn't my plan to create such a record. All I did was put in the effort to win every match I played and it went on for weeks, months and years until my defeat to Ross Norman in Toulouse in 1986."

"The pressure began to mount as I kept winning every time and people were anxious to see if I could be beaten. In that World Open final, Ross got me. It was exactly five years and eight months. I was unbeaten for another nine months after that defeat."

Success in The Hardball Game

With his dominance over the international squash game in the first half of the 1980s secure, Jahangir decided to test his ability on the North American hardball squash circuit in 1983-1986. (Hardball squash is a North American variant of the game, played on smaller courts with a faster-moving ball.) Jahangir played in 13 top-level hardball tournaments during this period, winning 12 of them. He faced the leading American player on the circuit at the time, Mark Talbott, on 11 occasions (all in tournament finals), and won 10 of their encounters. With his domination of both the softball and hardball versions of the game, Jahangir truly cemented his reputation as the world's greatest squash player. His success in North America is considered by some observers to be among the factors which led to growing interest in the international "softball" version of squash in the continent, and the demise of the hardball game in the late-1980s and 1990s.

Rivalry with Jansher Khan

At the end of 1986 another Pakistani squash player, Jansher Khan, appeared on the international scene to challenge Jahangir's domination. (Jansher is not known to be directly related to Jahangir, but their families originate from the same village in the Peshawar region of northern Pakistan, so they may be distantly related.) Jahangir won their first few encounters in late-1986 and early-1987. But Jansher scored his first win over Jahangir in September 1987, beating him in straight games in the semi-finals of the Hong Kong Open. Jansher then went on to beat Jahangir in their next eight consecutive encounters and capture the 1987 World Open title.



Jahangir ended Jansher's winning streak in March 1988, and went on to win 11 of their next 15 encounters. The pair met in the 1988 World Open final, with Jahangir emerging the victor. But by that point it had become clear that squash now had two dominant players. The pair would continue to dominate the game for the rest of the decade. Jansher and Jahangir met a total of 37 times in tournament play. Jansher won 19 matches (74 games and 1,426 points), and Jahangir 18 matches (79 games and 1,459 points). This record doesn't include exhibition matches and league matches between them.

Jahangir did not win the World Open again after 1988, but he continued a stranglehold over the British Open title which he captured a record ten successive times between 1982 and 1991.

Awards, Services & Recognition

Jahangir retired as a player in 1993 after helping Pakistan win the World Team Championship in Karachi. The Government of Pakistan honored Jahangir with the awards of Pride of Performance and civil award of Hilal-e-Imtiaz for his achievements in squash. They also awarded him the title of Sportsman of the Millennium.



In 1990, Jahangir was elected Chairman of the Professional Squash Association, and in 1997, Vice-President of the Pakistan Squash Federation. He was elected as Vice-President of the World Squash Federation in November 1998, and in October 2002 was elected WSF President. In 2004, he was again unanimously re-elected as President of the World Squash Federation at the International Federation's 33rd Annual General Meeting in Casa Noyale, Mauritius.

Jahangir is listed in Guinness Book of World Records as having the most world championship squash titles.

Time Magazine has named Jahangir as one of Asia's Heroes in the last 60 years.

Jahangir Khan was conferred with a Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy by London Metropolitan University for his contributions to the sport.

Due to his immense and absolute dominance in squash he was nicknamed "The Conqueror" (a loose translation of his first name).



Source: wikipedia