When Abbas Khan first came to the UAE in 1980, to take part in a tournament, squash was a thriving sport in the country. Two years later, he returned to take charge as the squash coach at Dubai Police, where he met Sheikh Ahmed bin Hasher and convinced him to take up squash in 1984.
Sheikh Ahmed, winner of the double trap shooting gold medal at the 2004 Olympics, went on to win the national squash championship 10 years in a row before returning to his first love, shooting.
Abbas, who heads the UAE Squash Association’s technical committee and is the national coach, reminisces about the good old days. But he is just as confident squash will soon regain its popularity here, especially as the country gets to ready to host their biggest squash tournament in decades: the World Series Finals next month in Dubai.
Here are excerpts from an interview with Abbas.
• What do you think about the PSA World Series Final coming to Dubai?
It’s a really good thing, and we need to congratulate Falcon and Associates for their effort in bringing this prized tournament to Dubai. It’s a good for the future of squash in the country. There are many top sports events happening here and it is a great to get a squash tournament on the calendar as well. We needed such an event to bring attention to squash in the UAE, to give it some exposure. So a really good thing.
• You have been here since 1982. How has the squash scene changed over the years?
When we started in 1982, football was the country’s No 1 sport, and it still is. We had cricket as well, but it was played mostly in Sharjah. So the biggest sport after football was squash. We did not have international tennis tournaments back then like we do now, or international golf tournaments. But we did have squash tournaments and we had a very active league. We used to have 300-400 players competing in Dubai alone. Then, in 1990, we brought the first glass squash court in Asia and we had the Dubai World Cup that year. We had 64 players from around the world playing here. In 2000, the Dubai Police Officers Club installed a squash court with three sides of glass, and there are only two such courts in the Middle East. The other one is in Muscat. So squash was really big here in the 1980s and 1990s. We had the world champions and all the top players playing here.
• What happened then? Why did squash lose out to other sports?
Things change. Tennis and golf came into the picture, and there were lots of cricket tournaments as well. Squash, of course, also suffered because of the lack of media exposure as the international authorities did little to promote the sport in the media, especially in the print media. You go anywhere in the world and you will rarely see any mention of squash on the sports pages. Say, if I bring the men’s and women’s No 1 here and take them to a mall, who will know them? But if you bring a tennis player, or a golf player, forget a footballer, and everyone will run to them. The international association needs to have a look at these things, find out why squash is missing from the media coverage and come up with solutions. They have to do this.
• The World Series Final will certainly help in getting squash some space on the back pages
Yes, things are looking up again, though. When I came here in 1980, we had barely 10 or 12 squash courts in the UAE. Now we have nearly 2,000 squash courts and you will find them everywhere. Squash is a sport you can play all year round. You cannot play golf in summer, you cannot play tennis in the summer, but you can play squash. That was the advantage we had with squash and that is we have so many squash courts – in residential apartments, hotels, academic institutes, clubs – everywhere. So squash is picking up slowly and this tournament World Series Final will certainly help a lot. The leagues are still on, in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain. We have a ladies league as well and we have more 50 or 60 ladies taking part. Many of them are Emiratis. So there is a lot of activity, but, like I said, we need more support from the international federation.
• As the head of the UAE Squash Association’s technical committee, what are your plans for the sport in the UAE?
We have made a programme for schoolchildren, which I want to give to the Ministry of Education because I feel it is very important for our kids. Another thing I would like to see is more community sports centres around the country. I see children playing on the streets, in the parking lots because they do not have any place to play. It’s not safe for them. So it would be great if we could have a community sports centre in every locality. I am not saying it should be free. We can charge membership fees, but make these centres affordable for all. We see kids spending hours in the malls, doing nothing while their parents shop. Why not have sports centres in the malls? They have lots of space. Have badminton courts, squash courts, table tennis – any sport. It will encourage a healthy lifestyle and prove to be an added attraction at the malls.
arizvi@thenational.ae
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