Jansher Khan v Ali Farag – A Cross Court Analytics Comparison

If a shortlist contained two names – Jansher Khan and Ali Farag – squash fans the world over would instinctively know the award category. Who is the greatest mover our sport has produced?

In this article, we focus a new lens on this tantalising comparison of two of the best players to take to the floorboards. Analysing five of Jansher’s matches – spanning his 1990 Mennen Cup victory over Jahangir to the 1997 Hong Kong final against Jonathon Power – and five of Farag’s matches from 2023, we bring in data analytics to ask: How similar were the playing styles of these two movement-maestros? The numbers suggest the similarity doesn’t go much further than their reputation for movement…

These comparisons can never be emphatically resolved – and perhaps that’s their appeal. By posing such questions we learn more about the sport, its characters and its evolutions. Over the next few months, we’ll be bringing you a series of past vs present match-ups to get your teeth into: and where better to start than with Ali Farag, the current men’s No.1.

With six British Opens and eight World Championships, Jansher’s haul of silverware was underpinned by an ability to retrieve like no other. But Farag’s court coverage has allowed him to quietly exert a comparable dominance: his name adorns the World Championship trophy four times now, more than all his current rivals combined (three).  

And for the first time, thanks to Cross Court Analytics’ popularisation of data collection in squash, we are able to compare players across eras through a new lens – putting numbers not just on the trophy count, but on the playing styles of both Ali Farag and Jansher Khan. Such numbers add to the debate by allowing a more rigorous comparison of their respective qualities. So, what do the numbers say? 

One stand-out similarity between Jansher and Farag in these tracked matches was their impressive winner and error rates. Farag hit 5 outright winners per game in the matches selected, with Jansher hitting a fraction more at 6 winners per game. It’s worth noting that Jansher had 15 points per game across which to notch up these winner numbers, while the new scoring system means Farag only has 11 potential winners per game, tie-breaks aside. 

But perhaps even more impressive than the winner tally was the low error numbers put up by both Jansher (2.3 per game) and Farag (2.0 per game). When you consider that their opponents across this data set were hitting 3.5 and 3.0 unforced errors per game respectively, the stinginess with which Jansher played and Farag continues to play is plain to see. While neither player will go down in the annals for their ability to hit winners, their games offer up very few cheap points.

The similarity in winners goes one step further, too: both Jansher and Farag hit their highest number of winners with shots from the backhand mid-court – in the matches sampled, Jansher punished his opponents with just over 1 in 3 of his winners from this region, while Farag came in at just under 1 in 3 of his winners. The numbers suggest that Jansher was more adept at putting winners away from deep on his forehand though: the Pakistan great hit 1 in 6 of his total winners from this region, far more than the Egyptian, who, for every 100 winners, hits fewer than 4 from this region.

The numbers indicate the percentage of each player’s winners they hit from each region of the court. As seen in the chart above, both Khan (left) and Farag (right) hit the majority of their winners from the mid-left region. But while Khan hit a high number of winners from deep on his forehand, Farag is more prolific at hitting winners from short positions.

What Farag might lack compared with Jansher in terms of attacking options from deep, he more than makes up for with attacks into the front. Farag hit more than half of his winners with drop shots, a noticeable difference from Jansher – Khan relied on the drop shot winner for around only one third of his winners.

The numbers indicate the percentage of each player’s winners they hit into each region of the court. While Khan (left) hit over a third of his winners to deep, with a particularly high number of winners to deep on his opponents’ forehand, Farag is more prolific at hitting winners to short positions: drop shot winners account for over half of Farag’s winners.

Putting winners to one side, the readiness to play into the front of the court throughout the rally stands out as a major difference between the Farag and Jansher samples. In Farag’s matches from 2023, both he and his opponents are taking the ball short roughly 1 shot in every 8; contrasted with the Jansher matches from the 1990s, in which both Jansher and his opponents took the ball short only 1 in 20 opportunities, the dynamism and drop-shot aggression of the modern game is a marked change. 

What has remained a constant, though, is the basics of line and length hitting. Let’s consider the area of the court from which most shots are played – the deep backhand region – and both players’ ability to keep opponents in this traditionally defensive zone. Jansher and Farag are inseparable by this metric: both are able to return shots from this region back to this region a shade under 50% of the time, and 10% more than their respective opponents. 

These charts look only at shots played from the deep left region (circled). The numbers indicate the percentage of each player’s shots from the deep left that they hit to each region. As shown, both Khan (43.8%) and Farag (46.3%) hit almost half of their shots from deep left back to deep left.

If their shot profiles from deep are by and large the same, one difference in the data is in the number of times Jansher and Farag employ the boast. Be this in attack or in defence, the Egyptian is much more inclined to put in a boast, using this angle twice as often as Jansher did. The numbers tell us that Jansher, instead, opted to use height much more frequently than Farag does – Jansher lifted the ball 1 in 7 shots, while Farag does so just 1 in 11. 

But the biggest discrepancy between these two players is in the number of times they volleyed the ball. Ali Farag is a consummate volleyer – at 1 in 4 shots played on the full, he makes use of this shot more than anyone else on tour. At his most fluent, Farag pins opponents in the back corners better than anyone else, intercepting a vast number of shots across the short line and ratcheting up the pressure with every exchange. 

Jansher, by contrast, volleyed just 1 in 7 shots in this sample, typifying a marked difference in approach – while both players are amongst the best retrievers to have played the game, Jansher in particular was renowned for his ability to soak up pressure rally after rally after rally. His relative lack of volleying is in keeping with a player looking to slow the tempo down, forcing his opponents to inject all the pace, and maximising his opportunity to retrieve.

In addition to playing style, several notable differences emerge between the two eras. In this sample from the 1990s, the average rally length in Jansher’s matches was 9 shots long; fast forward to 2023, and the typical length of Farag’s rallies is 16 shots. The longer rallies in the modern era mean that players in the current generation cover more ground than their predecessors: Farag typically covers 770 metres per game, while Jansher clocked up ‘just’ 700 metres in longer games played to 15. 

But the biggest change in the shape of squash rallies over the past 25 years has been a reinterpretation of interference. In Jansher’s heyday, referees were much more inclined to award Yes Lets for players coming together; but with passages of play becoming intolerably staccato, referees are now instructed to disincentive breaks in tempo by more liberally awarding No Lets and Strokes. The numbers make for stark – even amusing – reading.

Jansher’s matches saw a full 16 decisions per game – three quarters of which were Yes Lets. In Farag’s matches, referees were called upon to determine the result of the rally just 5-and-a-half times per game, with Yes Lets constituting a little under 60% of decisions. Improvements are being made to the refereeing process every year, an acknowledgement that things are still not ideal – but these numbers help illuminate how far the sport has come. 

Two great movers – certainly. Two players who excelled at the fundamentals of length hitting, and who will be remembered for their retrievals over their shot making. But the numbers depict two relatively different styles: of Jansher, who relied on the groundstroke, and who disrupted opponent fluency with the use of height; and of Farag, who pins opponents deep, taking their time away with volleys, and who readily uses the boast to change angles. Each style undoubtedly a product of the eras in which they played, but with sufficient differences that era alone cannot account for everything. May the debate roll on – now with some numbers to add to the equation.

Matches analysed:

Jansher Khan vs:

Jahangir Khan. 3-0. Mennen Cup Invitational, 1990

Chris Dittmar. 3-2. Qatar Classic, 1992

Anthony Hill. 3-1. Hong Kong, 1996 (no sharable video)

Rodney Eyles. 3-0. British Open, 1996

Jonathon Power. 3-1. Hong Kong, 1997

Ali Farag vs:

Joel Makin. 3-1. Manchester Open, 2023

Mostafa Asal. 3-1. El Gouna International, 2023

Paul Coll. 3-2. Paris Squash, 2023

Diego Elias. 3-1. Paris Squash, 2023

Tarek Momen. 3-1. Qatar Classic, 2023