Squash is not just a game; it also builds independence. As with any sport approached properly and with concentration, one has to be independent in that area, because it’s ruthless. You have to stand on your own two feet entirely. Basically it’s the individual down there in the pit who has to promote himself or herself, and persevere, and learn all kinds of little things that are character-building.
The average person playing squash on a social basis, or as a serious hobby, can treat the game as a mental and physical therapy and not as a matter of life or death. Although almost everyone has an inherent competitive instinct, there is not the same necessity to be successful and the enjoyment factor can and should be more overt. The game is very much the thing and winning then becomes an important part of the whole, but not the crux of the matter.
But for the professional squash player – indeed, any professional sportsperson – the marvellous enjoyment derived from playing is only exceeded at the moment of triumph. That, and the moment of defeat, are the two real moments of truth: of exhilaration on the one hand and despair on the other, when one realizes that all the preparatory punishment and self-denial have or have not been enough.
Jonah Barrington looks to the mental side of squash, to the talents you cannot see, but which divide the champion squash player from the also-ran. They are described alliteratively, so that you can remember them: Fire, Fitness, Fastness, Feel, Force, Fibre, Fear, Flair and Faith – the Nine Points of the Lore.
And, in an extra chapter in this new edition of MURDER IN THE SQUASH COURT, Jonah Barrington re-visits his prediction in the Foreword of the 1982 edition that Jahangir Khan’s victory over Geoffrey Hunt in the World Open in Toronto in November 1981 would allow the remarkable 17-year-old rival to march on to take the British Open in the following spring. Barrington records Jahangir’s journey – but the gifted teenager was just commencing his journey and would take that coveted title for 10 extraordinary consecutive years.
