JAHANGIR THE CONQUEROR

A look at the remarkable life and squash career of Jahangir Khan

Getty Images/Illustration

In The City of Flowers, a non-descript young ball boy, short and thin, would play against himself, barefoot, late into the night. Little did he know then, that the booming explosions under the peaceful night sky would go on to reverberate over the next five decades. Peshawar’s recorded history dates back to at least 539 BC, making it the oldest city in Pakistan. Even the dream merchants of Hollywood would struggle to come up with a more romantic story than the rise of Hashim Khan. In 1951, he won his first of seven British Opens (the de facto World Championship before the World Open was introduced in the 1970s). Schools were closed for the day as Hashim was driven through the streets of Peshawar in an open top car.

Inspired by the success of his distant relative, Roshan Khan (who was once so poor, that he slept on the streets) went to England with £5, a borrowed overcoat and warnings that he would starve again. Instead, he beat Hashim Khan in 1957, to win his own British Open, opening a door to a better life for his sons Torsam and Jahangir.

The Khan dynasty started from the valley of the Khyber Pass where Abdul Majid Khan laid the foundation of the greatest squash dynasty the world has ever known, and quite possibly will ever know. As the defense of the pass seemed dogmatic to the ancient Pashtun, so does being the best at the game of squash seem for a Khan. For the better part of 50 years they had an iron grip at the top of the squash world, decimating all opposition that stood in their way, until 1998 when Jansher Khan — scion of another Khan clan — would lose to Peter Nicol.

Five Hundred and Fifty-Five. FIVE HUNDRED AND BLOODY FIFTY-FIVE. Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. Any self-respecting sports fan should know their basic history. Jerry Rice’s total receiving yards, Stockton’s total assists, Gretzky’s 215-point season, Sittler’s 10-point game, Wilt’s (just pick one, let’s go with the 100-point game), Oscar Robertson averaging a triple double in the ’61-’62 season, Cy Young’s 511 wins (749 complete games!), Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits, Henderson’s 1,406 stolen bases, DiMaggio’s 56 game hit streak and Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games played. I am sure you can think of many more, and yes I know the list is predominantly comprised of sports that dominate the North American landscape, but those are precisely the fans whose attention I want to draw.

Add this to your list.

Jahangir Khan, five years and eight months, 555 straight matches won in elite level squash. I’ll give you a second to wrap your head around this mind-boggling number.

When you research longest winning streaks, it is littered with high school and collegiate records. A couple that are somewhat worthy of mentioning in the same breath are Ed Moses who went unbeaten in 122 straight 400m hurdles races over almost ten years and Dutch wheelchair tennis legend Esther Vergeer who won 4 straight Paralympic Gold medals and went an entire decade unbeaten through 470 matches. Honorable mentions must go to Martina Navratilova’s near perfect 1984 season when she won 74 straight matches, the longest winning streak in tennis history, and boxing legend Julio Cesar Chavez who won 87 straight in a 13 year span.

This is not some obscure record that happened many moons ago. 2016 marks the 30-year anniversary of Jahangir’s historic defeat. Usually we celebrate historic victories, but the fact that we are talking about a defeat in such revered terms just goes to show the magnitude of his accomplishment. Only after the streak was over did people truly fathom and appreciate the staggering nature of this record.

The indisputable Oxford Companion to Sports and Games credits Harrow School in England as the birthplace of modern squash, where in the mid-19thcentury the first dedicated squash courts were built. However, it can be further traced back to London’s Fleet Prison where inmates passed their time by hitting a hard rubber ball against the courtyard walls, thereby developing a game that came to be known as rackets. That balls were in short supply is a reasonable assumption to make and thus play continued even after they had burst. These balls were slower and “squashed” on impact giving birth to the game we know today.

In my previous article we explored how legends are never born without difficulties. This holds true for Jahangir as well. He grew up a weak and sickly child, underwent two hernia operations and was told by doctors, in no uncertain terms, to not take part in any strenuous physical activities. But squash ran in the boy’s blood, and Roshan Khan acquiesced to Jahangir’s demands and allowed him to take up the game with certain limiting guidelines. His tutelage started under the careful eyes of Roshan but was soon taken up by his brother Torsam who was himself a top 10 ranked player in the circuit. Very early on, Torsam realized that his brother had that X-Factor, and he was ready to sacrifice his own playing career to guide Jahangir to the pinnacle of the sport.

Thus commenced a grueling training and fitness regime, which has now become the stuff of legends. Long morning runs, gym training, racquet drills and relentless court sprints. Jahangir would run on practically any surface, from knee-deep waters, asphalt roads, rugged farm fields and later in his career on top of the line custom built tracks. The punishing training regime transformed this seemingly weak child into one of the fittest athletes in the world, earning him the moniker “The fittest man on Earth”. He not only coped with one of the most physically demanding sport ever invented, but pushed its boundaries to stratospheric levels. Jahangir developed a simple but brutal style, hanging back and striking the ball with power, precision and pace to demolish his opponents.

The prodigal son was now ready. In 1979 a 15-year-old boy was ready to take on all comers. He wasn’t brash or boastful, but a hushed rumour was already spreading over the land of squash. There had been a young Padawan in training, the next Khan was coming.

But there was another setback. Because of a recent illness, the Pakistan selection committee refused to select Jahangir to compete in the World Open in Australia. Undeterred, Jahangir entered the World Amateur Individual Championship, where he was made to qualify for the tournament proper, due to his lack of prior tournament results. After qualifying, he faced one of the top seeds in the first round, a match he duly won, dismissing any notions that he was too young to be taken seriously. One by one they fell at his sword and Jahangir Khan, all of age-15 became the youngest ever winner of the tournament. The record still stands.

No amount of training however, could have prepared Jahangir for what was to follow. In November of that year, Torsam was playing one of his last scheduled tournaments in Australia. The squash world was shocked when news spread of his heart attack, Torsam was no more. Jahangir was inconsolable. His mentor, confidant, and best friend was suddenly snatched away from him in a cruel twist of fate. Completely shattered by the dirty trick played on him by the celestial forces Jahangir contemplated giving up the game. As the months passed, his resolve hardened, and instead of quitting, he vowed to continue playing the game as a tribute to his brother. The responsibility of grooming the young prodigy was then taken up by his uncle Rehmat Khan.

1981. The precocious 17 year old Jahangir meets the iconic Geoff Hunt. Winner of the first four World Opens and seven British Opens, the Australian maestro is widely regarded as one of the best ever. What followed was nothing short of sensational. Hunt, previously rated the fittest man in squash, was brought crumpling to his knees, literally, as he struggled to return a serve late in the game by the relentless Khan. The baton wasn’t so much as passed but snatched away by Jahangir. But Geoff Hunt wasn’t who he was, for no reason. Scarcely two weeks after, channeling his inner Wolverine, his battered body astonishingly recovering in time, he won his eighth and final British Open, adding another accolade to his already embarrassingly rich palmarès. Inside the Churchill Theatre in Bromley, Hunt imparted upon Jahangir his final lesson, never to abandon a winning game plan.

His education now complete, later that year the teenage Jahangir would become the youngest ever winner of the World Open beating Hunt in the final in my hometown of Toronto. Less than six months after, Jahangir would win the first of his 10 consecutive (!) British Open titles. Not even twenty, his rule was absolute.

Forget Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, you are about to see the greatest show in the world!

They say sometimes success involves being at the right place at the right time. Louis Pasteur however said: “Luck favours the prepared mind.” Khan’s command, both mental and physical, was total. He created an enormous psychological barrier for his opponents. All they could hope for were respectable losing scores against him. If they were drawn against him in the early stages of a tournament, they knew they would be on their way home the next day. He had a happy knack of simplifying other people’s travel arrangements. Jahangir was playing with such devastating authority that only one player, Hiddy Jahan, managed to take him to five games during his historic run. Those like Gamal Awad, who boasted that they would bring him down, were themselves grounded into submission. During the Patrick International Festival final at Chichester in 1983, the Egyptian pushed himself to the limit in a marathon that lasted two hours and forty-six minutes, at the time the longest match on record. Jahangir was equal to the challenge and won 3–1. A fortnight later, they met again in the final of the British Open at Derby Assembly Rooms. Shattered by his earlier defeat, Awad could only put up a token resistance. He was never the same player after that ordeal in Chichester. The devastation Khan was leaving behind from tournament to tournament mirrored that of another Great Khan, Genghis. The Mongolian warlord was on a mission to unite and consolidate all the nomadic tribes under one rule. Jahangir meanwhile, seemed to be sitting in the middle of his own manufactured Silk Road, exacting heavy toll on anyone who would dare to cross it. He became the first player ever to win the World Open without dropping a game. In 1982, Jahangir achieved another seemingly inhuman feat by winning the International Squash Players Association Championship without losing a single point! Sponsors were queuing up to be represented by the Great Khan. In a sport without the glossy pay cheque, Jahangir became its first and only millionaire. Mirroring boxing for the sheer gladiatorial brutality of the big matches where two protagonists are locked inside a glass box trying to inflict maximum damage on each other, it is perhaps fitting that Jahangir would meet Ali several times. There is a famous image from one such meeting at a newspaper office in Saudi Arabia where Ali is ducking and weaving and Jahangir is swatting a racquet at the great boxer.

As if his exploits weren’t already impressive enough, Khan decided to prove his mettle on the North American hardball squash circuit. Hardball squash is a variant of squash played on a smaller court with a faster moving ball. Jahangir crossed the pond to play 13 top level tournaments, out of which he won a mind boggling 12. He defeated one of the greatest hardball squash players ever, the American Mark Talbott in 10 out of the 11 finals they contested in.

The eighties was an era of great change for the sport. His record of success sparked all kinds of innovations in the game, starting with challenges from rival players and coaches who were desperately seeking new ways to bring the unbeaten run to a close. Just like tennis, innovation was transforming the types of rackets players were using, from small wooden rackets to bigger graphite models. The scoring system was changed, designed to make the sport more attractive to the television audience. Traditional courts gave way to those made of Perspex, and then glass. These changes helped shape the modern professional game, and Jahangir’s astonishing achievements were always at the forefront. With each passing year Jahangir adapted to the changes, and still conquered.

Tragedy in Toulouse: November 1986. The tabloids were busy reporting on the appointment of a certain Scot as the new Manchester United manager. What would follow were 26 golden years under Sir Alexander Chapman Ferguson. Later that month, Michael Gerard Tyson would become the youngest heavyweight boxing champion aged 20 years 4 months and 22 days. Sandwiched in between these two iconic moments in sports, something else happened, which brought attention to a game rarely on the radar of the wider sports media. The World Open final brought Jahangir face to face with a familiar foe, New Zealander Ross Norman. Norman, ranked 2ndbehind Khan for quite some time going into the match had once famously stated: “One day Jahangir will be slightly off his game and I will get him.” After 30 consecutive defeats, this was his 31stattempt. Although Khan was at the peak of his powers and the outcome looked inevitable even before the game had begun, one felt certain anomalies in the cosmic forces. For the first time, Rehmat Khan, was absent from a World Open final to watch his nephew play.

The scoreboard at the Palais de Sports arena read 9–5, 9–7, 7–9, 9–1. Ross Norman, 1986 World Open Champion (the winner’s prize money a laughable $10,000). The most sensational result in the annals of the game, and perhaps rather fittingly, it was in France, a country seasoned in violent overthrows. Sheer amazement soon gave away to an odd sense of relief. Jahangir Khan was human after all. After waiting for five years and eight months, his detractors were delighted. Jahangir’s reign was driving sponsors away since the outcome was so predictable. He had been under pressure to loosen his grip, a rather bizarre situation to which a bemused Jahangir’s response was pretty matter of fact: “All I did was put in the effort to win every match I played in, and it went on for weeks, months and years.” As the dust settled and people tried to make sense of Jahangir’s incredible run some put forth the argument that Khan’s pre-eminence was due to the flatness of the surrounding countryside. That he had no real competition; that the old masters were on their way down; that the new young talents had not yet matured; that he did not even have to put in an effort on many occasions as many simply succumbed willingly to his reputation. These were of course foolish and maudlin sentiments. He simply became too good for everyone around him. And as if to prove a point, Jahangir would go undefeated for another nine months after that defeat.

In Hamlet, Polonius (Claudius’ obsequious chief counselor) offers his son Laertes a range of advice. Among the suggestions around dressing well and neither lending nor borrowing money, Polonius wisely observes: This above all: To thine own self be true. Jahangir Khan in his career treaded the path that he believed in his heart to be true, that the only way to the top was through hard work. In the process, he not only gave Pakistan one of its greatest ever athletes, he also honoured the memory of his brother by becoming what Torsam had dreamed for him, to be the best in the world.

Jahangir retired with a combined 16 titles (6 World Opens and 10 British Opens), the most ever, and transferred the keys to his empire to Jansher Khan who himself won 14 titles (8 World Opens and 6 British Opens), the second most. The depths to which Pakistan squash has sunk to over the past two decades has been painful to watch. After dominating the game in the 1930s and 40s, Egypt went through a similar decline but has since managed to turn things around. Seven of the Top Ten players in the world as this is being written are Egyptians. One can only hope that Pakistan will be able to recapture some of the flashes of its glory days.

For the game is that much more riveting with a Khan in the mix.

“I believe my story can offer hope to millions of people all over the world who are poor, bereaved or sick. At different times, I have been all three” — Jahangir Khan.