Well the names need no introduction.
Jahangir Khan is to Squash what Bradman was to cricket, Mohammad Ali is to Boxing or Pele is to Soccer.
The incredible feats of the aptly named Jahangir Khan (Jahangir means conqueror) on the Squash court have rightly earned him the reputation as the greatest player ever in the history of the sport. He won the game’s premier tournament The British Open a record ten times (1982-1991). That is like winning ten Wimbledon titles in a row! We all talk about Federer and Borg’s five straight Wimbledon titles but imagine doing it for a whole decade. That is simply mind boggling. The next closest winners (7) are his Uncle Hashim Khan and the Australian Geoff Hunt. His father Roshan Khan also won the British Open in 1957.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Open_Squash
As you can see very clearly from the list, no one has been able to win the British Open more than twice in a row since 1997, a tribute to the remarkable consistency and stamina of the two Khans! Infact the British Open title remained with Pakistan from 1982-1997
Not only that, Jahangir remained unbeaten in 555 games between 1981 and 1986, an even more staggering stat.
The same holds true for world Open where no player has been able to match the feats of the two Khans
Jansher Khan won a record eight World Open titles. What’s more he held the world no. 1 ranking for a record ten consecutive years from 1988-1997
Legacy of Jahangir Khan
British Open: A record 10 straight titles
World Open: 6
Jahangir Khan, a former World No. 1 professional squash player from Pakistan, who is considered by many to be the greatest player in the history of the game. During his career he won the World Open six times and the British Open a record ten times. Between 1981 and 1986, he was unbeaten in competitive play for five years. During that time he won 555 matches consecutively. This was not only the longest winning streak in squash history, but also one of longest unbeaten runs by any athlete in top-level professional sport. He retired as a player in 1993, and has served as President of the World Squash Federation since 2002. Jahangir retired as a player in 1993 after helping Pakistan win the World Team Championship in Karachi. The Government of Pakistan honored Jahangir with the awards of Pride of Performance and civil award of Hilal-e-Imtiaz for his achievements in squash. They also awarded him the title of Sportsman of the Millennium.
Legacy of Jansher Khan
British Open: 6
World Open: A record 8 times
Jansher Khan, former World No. 1 professional squash player from Pakistan, is widely considered to be one of the greatest squash players of all time. He came from a family of outstanding squash players. His brother Mohibullah Khan was one of the world’s leading professional squash players in the 1970s. Another older brother, Atlas Khan, was a highly-rated amateur competitor.
With Jahangir reaching the twilight of his career and then retiring, Jansher came to establish himself as the sole dominant player in the game in the mid-1990s. He won a record total of eight World Open titles, the last being in 1996. He chose not to defend his World Open title in 1997 because the event was held in Malaysia, and he had a pending court order in Malaysia relating to maintenance payments for his son, Kamran Khan, following his separation from his Malaysian wife. Jahangir maintained a stranglehold on the British Open up to 1991 (he won the championship 10 consecutive times), but when he finally relinquished the title it was Jansher who claimed it for the next six successive years.
Jansher officially announced his retirement from squash in 2001. He won a total of 99 professional titles and was ranked the World No. 1 for over six years.
Jansher-Jahangir Rivalry
During Jansher’s career, he won the World Open a record eight times, and the British Open six times. He won the World Junior Squash Championship title in 1986. He also turned professional that year. At the time, the men’s professional tour was dominated by another Pakistani player – Jahangir Khan. At the World Open in 1986, Ross Norman finally ended an unbeaten run by Jahangir in tournament play which had lasted a staggering five and a half years. But from 1987 onwards, Jahangir would no longer be able to tower over the game in the way he did during the first half of the decade, as Jansher quickly turned men’s squash into a sport which now had two powerful dominant players. Jahangir won the pair’s first few encounters in late-1986 and early-1987. Jansher then scored his first win over Jahangir in September 1987, beating him in straight games in the semi-finals of the Hong Kong Open. Jansher then went on to beat Jahangir in their next eight consecutive encounters. This included a win in the semi-finals of the 1987 World Open, following which Jansher claimed his first World Open title by beating Australia’s Chris Dittmar in the final.
The Jansher-Jahangir rivalry would dominate squash in the late-1980s through to the early-1990s. The pair met total of 37 times in tournament play. Jansher won 19 matches (74 games and 1,426 points), and Jahangir 18 matches (79 games and 1,459 points).
