Back the bid

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THE Tuanku Muhriz Trophy Squash Championship has taken place before, but this year it was a leg of the Malaysian Tour Squash Circuit spearheaded by our former world number 10 Azlan Iskandar. With the CIMB KL Open Squash Championship occurring the following week, some of the world’s top players came down to the newly-installed glass court next to the Tuanku Abdul Rahman Stadium in Paroi to participate – just like how tennis players play at the Queen’s Club Championships before Wimbledon.

The tournament aroused curiosity from passers-by who had never seen squash being played before, let alone by some of the world’s best players. The objective of the circuit, covering 10 locations across the peninsula, is to rectify this ignorance and give young Malaysians the opportunity to play the sport competitively and be inspired by the very best.

There has been much inspiration in recent years already – everyone knows the names Nicol David and Ong Beng Hee apart from Azlan Iskandar – but because of their prominence, casual watchers may have failed to notice that Malaysians are increasingly occupying top positions in the sport internationally. The women’s final of the Tuanku Muhriz Trophy saw our Delia Arnold (currently world number 33) beat Denmark’s Line Hansen (22), while in the men’s final, Switzerland’s Nicolas Mueller (21) beat our Mohd Nafiizwan Adnan (40).

Judging by the number of young Malaysians intently watching the ball through the transparent walls – and the Squash Racquets Association of Malaysia (SRAM) has its own ambitious plans to introduce squash to schools and universities – in seven years’ time Malaysians will be an ever stronger force in international squash.

That is why it is every Malaysian’s patriotic duty to Back the Bid for squash to be included in the 2020 Olympics. It is ridiculous, of course, that it is not already in the line-up, and it is farcical that the International Olympic Committee meeting in September will be considering squash alongside baseball/softball (merged in order to make a joint bid), karate, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu to be included for the 2020 programme – as if each of these sports is equal.

Squash is demonstrably superior to all of those sports (though perhaps some of the others are still superior to current Olympic sports), and the millions of camera angles and replays now possible make it ideal for today’s televisions. The critics will say that the Olympic line-up already has three racquet sports (tennis, badminton and table tennis) – but that’s a bit like saying there are already so many sports that, for example, take place in water. The fact that a racquet is used does not diminish its uniqueness. Furthermore, an obscure (and lethal) racquet sport called Basque pelota was once an Olympic sport, so on historical grounds there is no excuse.

However the ‘use of racquets’ argument does beg the question as to whether Eton Fives should be included instead: our team would no doubt be composed of Malay College Kuala Kangsar boys since their school hosts the only courts in the country. Incidentally, MCKK also hosted the country’s first squash competition in 1939. In that final, a Tunku Ja’afar beat an Abdul Razak, who were later to become Yang di-Pertuan Agong and Prime Minister respectively.

Sons of those two leaders also became squash players – Tunku Imran (who served as president of SRAM and the World Squash Federation) and Datuk Seri Nazir (chief executive of CIMB Group), who can still be spotted playing a vigorous game at the Royal Lake Club, which is where SRAM was formed in 1972 with architect Datuk Hisyam Al Bakri as president. SRAM has always benefited from the leadership of high-profile Malaysians over the years: the lawyer-politician Tan Sri Alex Lee, the lawyer-banker Datuk Nik Mohamed Din, the engineer Datuk Mokhzani Mahathir (now more involved in a high-octane sport of a different kind) and the engineer Datuk A Sani Karim.

Despite this, government support for the sport, especially compared to certain other sports, was historically meagre. This has changed somewhat in recent times, with the Minister of Youth and Sports (Datuk Seri Shabery Cheek) being a squash player, but the success of Malaysian squash with relatively little government intervention surely provides lessons for other sports.

The Father of Independence always spoke of sport as a key ingredient of national unity, and the first challenge of Vision 2020 is to “establish a united Malaysian nation made up of one Bangsa Malaysia”. As the official campaign for the next general election begins, I urge all Malaysians to unite in voting for squash and backing the bid for its inclusion in the 2020 Olympics. Details are at squash2020.com.

My thanks to SRAM president Datuk Syed Mustaffa Syed Ali for generously hosting me at the CIMB KL Open Squash Championship final.

Tunku Abidin Muhriz is president of IDEAS.