“Have you seen the way we drive?” said El Tayeb, the women’s world No. 3, during a break after a match.

Egyptian squash is dynamic and unstructured, with out-of-nowhere drop shots and deceptive flicks of the wrist. Time and again, players and coaches described their attitude toward the game as “undisciplined,” by which they mean it is improvised and unscientific. Most would rather play a match than hone a skill through repetitive drilling.

El Tayeb and fellow professionals are not chasing riches, at least by the standards of more popular professional sports. The average professional squash player earns about $100,000 a year, and the top player earned about $280,000 in all of 2018, according to the website Improve Squash. That’s roughly what tennis players earned for reaching the round of 16 at the United States Open in 2019.

But squash has plenty of social capital, and it is often a path to a spot at a top American university or prep school. There are four Egyptian players at Harvard. Behind many of the best young players in Egypt are parents hoping their children will get the finest education.

“Egyptian mothers are like our secret weapon,” said Amir Wagih, a former member of Egypt’s national team and a full-time coach.

While there is a strong patriarchal and religious streak in most of Egypt, the players come from a small, somewhat privileged slice of society that is westernized. The women wear skirts on the court, and aside from the occasional sniping by traditionalists on social media, they don’t hear much grief about it.