KARACHI, July 1: National champion Shahid Zaman leapfrogged to a career-high No. 14 in the latest world squash rankings issued by the Professional Squash Association (PSA) on Friday.
Shahid, winner of the International Championship in Lahore last week, moved three places up in the July rankings.
It was the Quetta-born Shahid’s victory over Malaysia’s Azlan Iskander in the final of the championship that enabled him to move up the rankings’ ladder.
Shahid remains as Pakistan’s highest-ranked player on the World Tour.
His elder cousin Mansoor Zaman also improved his ranking, moving three up to No. 24 on the PSA computer.
Apart from the Zaman cousins, there are ten more Pakistanis in the top 100 world rankings. Except for Peshawar’s Farhan Mehboob, all the leading Pakistani players on the World Tour have experienced an improvement in their world rankings.
Farhan, a nephew of former world champion Jansher Khan, fell from No. 67 to 71 in the new rankings. The slump is a result of a six-month suspension imposed on the youngster by the Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) over a verbal row with national coach Rahmat Khan.
Quetta’s Shamsul Islam Khan moved three places up to No. 46 and is one of only three Pakistanis in the top 50 club. Other Pakistani players in the top 100 list are Yasir Butt (52), Arshad Iqbal Burki (53), Farrukh Zaman (61), Majid Khan (63), Amir Atlas Khan (78), Khayal Mohammad (78), Adil Maqbool (85) and Khalid Atlas Khan (92).
Meanwhile, France’s Thierry Lincou moves into the second half of the year as number one in the new rankings. Lincou, 29, who has held the position unopposed since January, heads an unchanged top ten list, in front of England’s Lee Beachill at two; Australian David Palmer at three; and Canada’s Jonathon Power at number four.
England’s Peter Nicol is at five, the ranking he first attained in November 1994 and has only dropped below once since that date.
Lower in the list, Malaysia’s Mohd Azlan Iskandar, runner-up in the PTCL Championship in Lahore, returns to his career-best No17 position.
The top 20 players of the world:
1 [1] Thierry Lincou FRA 2 [2] Lee Beachill ENG 3 [3] David Palmer AUS 4 [4] Jonathon Power CAN 5 [5] Peter Nicol ENG 6 [6] Amr Shabana EGY 7 [7] Anthony Ricketts AUS 8 [8] James Willstrop ENG 9 [9] Nick Matthew ENG 10 [10] John White SCO 11 [11] Karim Darwish EGY 12 [12] Gregory Gaultier FRA 13 [13] Graham Ryding CAN 14 [17] Shahid Zaman PAK 15 [14] Joseph Kneipp AUS 16 [15] Ong Beng Hee MAS 17 [18] Mohd Azlan Iskandar MAS 18 [16] Adrian Grant ENG 19 [19] Olli Tuominen FIN 20 [20] Mohammed Abbas EGY.—PPI
