Squash legend Hashim Khan who died in the US on Monday night will forever be remembered as one of the greatest players to have played the game.

The little, great man from the back hills of Peshawar was the first sportsman from Pakistan to gain the status of world champion, creating a rallying point for a fledgling nation.

Hashim Khan, born somewhere around 1914 (his exact year of birth remains disputed) in Nawakilli, a small village in the suburbs of Peshawar, won the first of his seven British Open crowns in 1951 at Wembley.

He was around 37 years then, an age when most athletes call it a day. But the squash star was made of sterner stuff. He won the tournament from 1951 to 1956 and then again in 1958 to set a record that was only surpassed years later by Australian legend Geoff Hunt.

But it had not always been like that for Hashim Khan. In his formative years, he quit school to become a ball boy at the courts and played the game barefoot before joining the ranks of the professionals.

As one of his sons put it: “He was a whirlwind who came out of the distant Himalayan mountains and conquered the world. It sounds mythical but it’s sort of fitting that it stays that way.” Hashim Khan was the founding father of the Khan dynasty that has dominated the sport for the better part of the last five decades.

He made his younger sibling Azam switch from tennis to squash and groomed him into a worthy successor. He also taught the art to his nephew Mohibullah Khan Sr, who, like his uncle, won the British Open trophy.

Later, his descendants ruled the hard ball version of the game in North America for years. Hashim Khan brought about a world of a change in the sport and his innovations made it extremely popular and exciting. The game of squash owes a huge debt to this legend.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2014