19 December 2010

CREATIVE, ATTACKING SQUASH by HISHAM ASHOUR

I've always thought Hisham would just be a funny caricature of Ramy: even though his shot-making ability is close to his illustrious younger brother's, movement-wise he used to be disaster. Due to his overweight he used to be constantly late on the ball, and as a consequence made silly choices and hit the tin more often than the front-wall. So it's pretty astonishing seeing him within just a couple of month loosing weight and moving so much better. With his current good results (he has beaten world #9 Laurens Jan Anjema twice in two weeks and got also the better off a slightly diminished Thierry Lincou) he will very probably break inside the top20 in the January rankings. Now it will be interesting to see if Hisham gets satisfied with this or if he considers it just as a first step to make it towards the top10. If it's the latter, there are fitness-wise still some brutal solitary training sessions ahead of him. Let's hope he'll make it, as it would be great for the global squash scene to see the percentage of the creative / exhibition-like players grow in the top10. Now that John White and Jonathon Power are not there anymore...