The Jonah Barrington Column: April 2022

One of the sport’s greatest thinkers and a pioneer for the professional game, Jonah Barrington offers his thoughts on all of squash's biggest talking points in a new monthly column – written exclusively for the PSA World Tour website.

In this month’s column, Jonah discusses the recent Allam British Open and Hania El Hammamy’s stunning win at the Wimbledon of Squash. The legendary Barrington also discusses Paul Coll’s immaculate title defence and opens up on who he believes can be a contender for the 2023 British Open titles.

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By Jonah Barrington

Hania El Hammamy has well and truly arrived.

There were those who may not have considered her the ultimate danger in terms of beating Nouran Gohar, but I’ve felt for a while that it was going to happen and it was very much a case of taking on a rival who she was highly motivated to beat, with the duo certainly not likely to go on holiday together.

It was feisty and dramatic and a hell of a match. It’s very possibly the best match Hania has played and, quite frankly, it was always going to occur as it was happening in every tournament she played and the British Open was the ultimate in that process.

So, it just confirmed what I thought. (Nour) El Sherbini has been installed for years at the top of the women’s game and so has Gohar, and Hammamy has now bridged that gap and is right there. Indeed, she will now be some people’s favourite to win the PSA World Championships, while of course Gohar will also still have her backers and some will pray for a fit-again Sherbini.

But what I did feel is that Hammamy knows exactly what she is trying to do on court, she has a habit of it and she has been coached how to do it. She is not creating any significant vulnerability in trying to add to her skills.

By contrast, and in my opinion, Nouran Gohar has been the most robotic of players yet one with amazing potency and a tremendous driving force that makes her hugely difficult to contain.

Indeed, she has done this with a simple game in terms of tremendous power on both wings and intensity to the back of the court and a short game relatively limited in terms of both the top end of the world game and in the Egyptian sense.

Yet now Nouran is trying to engage in developing her game and learning more about what she can do with her racket and changing one or two habits, all of which clearly I am surmising from my position as an observer.

Gohar has obviously been working with Rodney Martin and apart from the physical work, there will be plenty of emphasis in terms of what he feels she needs to develop with her racket in terms of the open face and holding, incorporating the factors which made him such a great player.

That in itself is not going to be a good thing for Nouran’s game in the short term.
In the British Open final, she was not overwhelmed, but a chink in her mental armour was exposed as she wasn’t able to maintain what has been a successful formula for her in her battles with her main rivals this time around.

I think also that there was that edge to it with Hammamy which upset Gohar’s composure and focus so much that by the end it was pretty much clear cut. But Gohar will not be going away that’s for sure.

So Nouran will come again and when she has had more time to digest what she is learning with Rodney, she will undoubtedly raise her game again.

Now to Nour El Sherbini.

I still think that right now Sherbini has been the greatest player to play the game and I go back to practising with Heather McKay at the Lansdowne Club, who was monstrously good and struck the ball so well she hit it better than 99 per cent of the men.

Yet going through the ages from Susan Devoy, Michelle Martin, Sarah Fitz-Gerald to Nicol David, for me Sherbini is the best player ever to date to have played the women’s game.

For a significant part of her career she has come on court and not been physically fully fit. Most of the time she has won and only been beaten at the death, and in my opinion would have won more majors [if she had stayed fit]. If you take the PSA World Championships in isolation as a measure of this, Nour would have been a lot closer to Nicol David’s record by now.

So now we just have to wait and see how her recovery from her latest injury goes. Everyone wants her back and she is a joy to watch and Sherbini, back at her best, will not only be in contention, but in my opinion will still the favourite to win the World Championships, although that is now marginal in terms of Gohar and Hammamy.
Certainly, I for one hope we see Sherbini again.

At present, it is just such a hugely healthy women’s game and there is a cast of players who are improving all the time. Although the bridging of the gap is just as difficult as it was, and few will bridge that gap, Gina Kennedy looks to me like the next one who will achieve that.

I believe that Kennedy will bridge the gap by next year and will be a contender for the British Open in 2023. I don’t say that she will win it, but she will be a contender.
I know that [coach] Ben [Ford] has said that she will be World No.1 in 15 months, but what I’m saying is that she will be the first of that group of girls below the very top to bridge the gap, and there is no doubt in my mind about that whatsoever.

There is a huge amount of improvement to be made by Gina, which is great, but at a distance what I’m seeing is somebody who is naturally physically fitter than any girl in the game.

I’m not saying that she is the best mover, as most of them are very athletic, but for me, Gina Kennedy is the most athletic. I did read about her sporting background of 1,500 metre successes, winning the mini marathon at the London Marathon and that just clears in my mind what I’ve seen on court.

You must factor in that she has had a year and a half during which she wasn’t actually able to play, which means that she has been raw in terms of actual professional experience at this stage in her career.

On the men’s side, I think that Paul Coll has shown in this last period that he has now answered all of the questions in terms of becoming No.1, taking the pressure of No.1 and confirming his ability to cope with all of that by retaining his British Open title.

It was indeed a wonderful tournament for him, with no games dropped and immense certainty in terms of the way he wanted to play and a game plan that had been scripted between Robert Owen and himself, and he produced everything in that regard unfalteringly.

There was a considerable challenge in the semis and finals with Mostafa Asal and Ali Farag and while 3-0 always makes it look relatively simple, it certainly was far from that. The match with young Asal in particular was very fiercely fought. Paul had to draw on all that he had learned over the last period on top of his supreme physicality.

But what has impressed me so much over this last year or more is the way in which he has opened his mind after quite a lengthy background in the professional game to technical changes and indeed physical changes as well.

A huge amount of work has been done on his movement to make it more economical, balanced, and now, of course, with minimal diving. In particular, the defensive amount of work he had to do, where under pressure he would just lift the ball and reset play, was impressive. I didn’t spot a dive in either of these two matches and as we know Paul almost got his ‘Superman’ tag because of his diving.

Clearly, Paul’s mental coach, Bart Wijnhoven, has also done a tremendous amount of work with him.

We are not looking at a guy of 18 or 19 years old, we are looking at a guy who had deep habits at his core, and he has had to open his mind up to allow these habits to be broken down, to be able to implement new habits in such a professional and clinical way, which he has done successfully.

All of that was too much for the other two main contenders, as well as in a quarter-final with Diego [Elias], which meant at the British Open he had to get past all of the three main danger men who all played well in their own ways. Yet they were unable to break Paul down and sustain the game plan that they had.

I do feel that Asal is developing by the month, and this was another huge experience for him and it was a semi-final that was a very demanding and exciting match in which the pace of it was at times pretty remarkable.

But having said that, Paul’s game plan meant that essentially the match was played in the way he wanted it played, and that was even more the case than in the final with Ali Farag, who in theory should have won the first game, although I still feel that Paul would have overturned that.

It was very, very special, and I think a lot of the people watching may not have warmed to the way he played, whereas an older audience would and would have seen it before with Jahangir and Jansher, the two great Khans who had inestimable skills with their rackets but played out rallies in a way rarely seen in this day and age.

It is also a game that young Egyptians would not have come across, a game that can be sustained with the demands of supreme concentration and focus allied to more simple but really excellent ball control. That is not the way of Egyptian junior squash.

So what you have there is a panoply of attacking shots to the front of the court, which is a very exciting spectacle for observers and an adrenaline ride for those playing, but there is actually no need for a back wall.

When they play each other, and against those from other countries who are not so fertile in terms of their short game, it is very easy to put these players under pressure and they go in and out of the front court so easily, as they have practised it so much.

Then suddenly they are playing against a different type of game, different technically, different physically and different, above all, mentally. You can see very vividly in this last year or so the way in which Paul has developed and taken the opportunity, not only physically but mentally, and that has been the overriding problem for them.

I knew that Ali was obviously right in contention, he is very bright and he will have thought about the circumstances and the Egyptians will have talked about this, indeed I know that they did, about the way in which Paul was overriding what might be seen as greater skills.

But at the same time, the talking doesn’t do it, it must be hard yards. Hard yards to improve the level of general fitness, the body strength and perhaps above all mental strength, but the latter is of no real value if your body is starting to quit on you.

Ali didn’t have control of what was going on, had run out of ideas about what to do and essentially was desperate, yet at the same time he remained not that far off.

So, it is not a question of: ‘I’m suddenly a bad player’ because of course Ali is not. You can lose form and momentum for different reasons, perhaps a niggle, a slight cold, but it is all going to happen quite quickly in the next two or three months and there is an opportunity to redeem the situation.

But what I would say is that, with Ali, much work has to be done over a longer period of time and with Asal it is a very different circumstance.

I believe that Ali Farag’s best match is still in front of him providing he gets it right, while Asal’s best match is definitely in front of him and it is not a question of him getting it right, it will just happen.

Paul Coll, because of where he has come from and what has happened with him, still has his best in front of him and I thought the British Open final was possibly the best match he has ever played to date because he broke Ali by the finish, and the way it was done was exemplary.

What of the others? I would suggest Diego Elias still has work to do on his physical strength. He is such a good squash player and has so much quality.

Mazen Hesham, who is one of the ultimate mavericks, has been gaining momentum with a greater period free from injury, which is excellent. Previously, I would always say he flattered to deceive, but now his opponents must feel a greater danger than in the last five years.

With Mohamed [ElShorbagy] there is still a huge question mark. Players have seen how vulnerable he has become and regardless of what a good start he may get in a match, those players who are dangerous to him will still feel that if they can get stuck in then he may opt out, and that was never the case previously.

Marwan ElShorbagy is wandering around in the wilderness and the one who is now ready to reach out to the elite is Youssef Ibrahim, as he is learning very rapidly on the hoof, and he is very different by being a very fertile lefty.