This Is Guernsey

By Rob Batiste

Marking 35 years of squash at King’s Club Rob Batiste takes a look at the finest players to tread the courts. This week the pick of the overseas stars IT’S not a commonly known fact that two men’s world squash champions have played in Guernsey.

But as neither man - the legendary Australian Geoff Hunt and Peter Nicol, the Scot turned Anglophile - played competitively at Kings, they do not make our list of the top 10 overseas stars to have played at the home of Guernsey squash.

Both greats were involved in exhibitions, Hunt in the early 1970s before Kings was even built and the freezing Elizabeth College court was the only one in the island.

Jonah Barrington, another legend of the game with no less than six British Open titles to his credit, also once graced the inhospitable college court which, due to its situation during a period when boarders numbered many dozen, played a key part in the development of the game in the island.

For the purpose of determining a top 10, who better to give his verdict on the respective skills of this collection of Egyptians, Pakistanis, Austral-ians, New Zealanders and Englishmen, than the man who was responsible for organising many of the tournaments which attracted them to the island?

Reg Harbour has no doubts as to the finest to have played here competitively and, yours truly, who extensively reported on the game for much of the golden period of the local game, is not going to disagree.

He is Egyptian and one of the most graceful players the sport has ever witnessed.

Ahmed Safwat was the first winner of the British Professional Championship which Harbour brought to King’s in 1974 and was played for three times before giving way to the British Airways Open and, ultimately, the John Player Open in the early 80s.

‘Saftwat was the key to it,’ recalled Harbour.

‘Everyone here thought he was phenomenal. Nobody had seen anything like it.

‘Safwat was ranked eight in the world but he was much better than that.

‘But in those days the professional circuit operated a seeding system whereby for every tournament the No. 8 ranked player would always have to play the No. 1 at the quarter-final stage, two plays seven etc.

‘That meant in nearly every big competition he always had to play Hunt and could not improve on his No. 8 ranking.’

An added joy of Safwat was that he knew how to entertain and was happy to put himself under pressure in an effort to do so.

Harbour explained.

‘He was a real finesse player and a much better version of our own Max Trouteaud - getting himself 2-0 and 8-0 down before coming back to win.’

Two more stars from the land of the pyramids were to succeed in Guernsey.

One of the great players of the 70s and 80s Gamal Awad died suddenly in his sleep in Alexandria in 2004, suffering a massive heart attack. He was 49.

Twice British Amateur champion, British Open runner-up and holder of the record for the longest match in squash history - against Jahangir Khan - of two hours 46 minutes, he was affectionately known as ‘Grasshopper’ or ‘Rubber man’ for his acrobatic performances.

His significant Guernsey success came in 1981 when he won a long and dramatic final against the fast-rising Aussie star, Dean Williams, who came within a point of confounding the world rankings.

In a match lasting 70 minutes Awad, ranked three places higher in the world at the time, won 3-9, 8-10, 9-3, 10-9, 9-2.

As nowadays, Egypt were then producing a string of world-class players and in 1980 two of them featured in another court six classic open final at King’s.

Safwat was back but this time gave way to fellow countryman and naturalised Swede, Ali Aziz.

The second-seed, with monstrously large thighs and a real powerhitter, triumphed in four as he had done so in the semi-finals against arguably the most entertaining and unpredictable player to have stepped onto the King’ showcourt, the Aussie with a dash of Aboriginality, Steve Bowditch.

The Australian was similar to Guernsey’s own Mark Roberts, in that he loved nothing more to try and win a rally in the deftest, most eye-catching way possible. He went for nicks from everywhere and in 1978 it was good enough to capture the Guernsey Open title.

I seem to recall a changing room conversation involving the curly-haired Australian and John Le Lievre, the Old Elizabethan who won many an England cap and cleared the path for the next generation of emerging Sarnian stars.

In his broadest Oz tones, Bowditch loudly observed: ‘One day, Le Lievre, you will hit the perfect backhand length but by then you will be so bloody old you will be in a wheelchair.’

It summed up their contrasting approach to the sport, but Bowditch got no further in professional squash than the Guernseyman.

‘He was very flashy and when it worked, it was fine,’ is the Harbour verdict, while it should surprise no-one that Roberts saw Bowditch as something of a hero.

‘Safwat was good, but brilliant with the racket was Bowditch. To me, he was a master stroke player. If it was there to be hit he’d try to put it away.’

Using Bowditch as an example, Harbour observed that such players rely ‘on a fine margin of error. It’s a fine balance.

‘He came unstuck in world terms because of his extravagant play.’

That same year, Guernsey welcomed players of the calibre of Abbas Kaoud, fast-rising Aussie star Glen Brumby, New Zealander Craig Blackwood and a Khan - Karimullah.

But King’s crowds were, in time, to witness an altogether better Kiwi and a classier Khan.

Mohibullah, the elder brother of the great Jansher, was the highest-ranked ever to play here, rising to number-two in the world.

Sadly, he did not produce his best form on the colder King’s courts, although he was to reach the open semis in 1982 and not long afterwards was caught carrying cannabis into the United Kingdom.

He claimed he had been forced to carry the cannabis in his squash bags by Pakistani gangsters.

The courts didn’t believe his story and he was sentenced to eight years jail. He served the full eight years as he refused to admit to the crime or give names.

The 1982 open tournament, the last of its kind, attracted not only Mohibullah, but also the top Kiwi, Ross Norman who is best remembered for winning the World Open in 1986 when he surprisingly beat Jahangir Khan in the final 9-5, 9-7, 7-9, 9-1.

The win marked the end of a five-year unbeaten run for Jahangir.

Norman, who reached world number two, had previously vowed: ‘One day Jahangir will be slightly off his game and I will get him.’

But in Guernsey, four years earlier, the top-seeded Norman had to settle for picking up the runners-up cheque, beaten 9-2 in the fifth by Gawain Briars, the British number two and world-ranked 11th.