Amir, Farhan unhappy with Egypt series plan

Two top squash players of the country have voiced their concerns about the bilateral series with Egypt scheduled in April and termed it “a useless activity”.

“This series is not going to benefit our players. The winners will surely be Egyptians and they will take away the prize money of $40,000 and our players will not get anything,” said Amir Atlas Khan while talking to ‘The News’.

Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) is organising a bilateral series with Egypt at PAF Museum in Karachi in which top five players of both the countries will compete to win the prize money of $40,000.

The matches are to be held in the four-wall, glass court from April 6-8.

Egypt’s players are World No 4 Omar Mossad, World No 9 Karim Abdul Gawad, World No 11 Tarik Momin, World No 13 Ali Farag and World No 18 Mazen Hesham.

They will face Pakistan’s Nasir Iqbal, Farhan Zaman, Danish Atlas, Tayyab Aslam and Shahjahan Khan. “The PSF should spend this money on players’ training and sending them for PSA tournaments. PSF gives tickets to our players half heartedly. The federation also doesn’t give respect to its players,” said Amir.

“The federation doesn’t provide proper diet and accommodation to players during training camps citing lack of funds. The bad policies of the federation have caused the downfall of squash in Pakistan,” said Amir.

Farhan Mehboob said the federation was spending huge money on this futile activity. “It is like throwing away money. This activity will not help the game of squash in anyway. The federation should have used this huge amount to organise events in the country,” said Farhan.

The federation, he added, could use this money to improve the players’ standards. “The federation also did injustice with me by not including me in the squad. I’m number one in national rankings and with the inclusion of PSA rankings I’m number three,” said Farhan.

“But the federation took only top five players according to PSA rankings, which is a big injustice to me,” he added.