There are a number of squash academies in the country being run privately or under the patronage of Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF).

The federation has Pakistan National Squash Academy (PNSA) in Islamabad. Besides, there is a Benazir Bhutto Squash Complex in Rawalpindi while PSF launched a squash academy in Peshawar a few years ago with eight coaches for training dozens of players.

The federation also established Jahangir Khan Academy at the National Coaching Center in Karachi in February 2016 with the financial aid of millions.

The academy had 10 players and two courts initially from under-11 to under-19 categories. Its head coach was Asif Khan, who was assisted by M Naseem, Aslam, Bilal, Murtaza, and Naveed Alam.

The academy promised up to Rs 5000 to each player along with equipment.

The PSF deployed three officers from the Pakistan Air Force to look after the affairs of the academy. But the academy failed to produce good results.

Hence, in 2017, PSF stopped funding the academy after paying four million rupees to the academy.

But later in 2021, the academy got a new patron while Pakistan Sports Board also extended its support to the academy. The academy had complete renovation and upgradation under a revenue-sharing agreement with PSB.

The academy then promised to provide advanced training, accommodation, and food to a group of players in order to produce new talent for national squash.

But nothing concrete has been seen yet by any of the above mentioned academies despite their claims. The reason is that they are flouting the basic purpose of a squash academy.

The squash academies in the country completely ignore two main aspects - having qualified coaches and beginner players. All they want is quick fame and success in a short time which is not possible nowadays.

Every academy has beginners, intermediate, advanced and elite level squash players. The most considerable and difficult part is to coach the beginners.

The basic purpose of a squash academy is to promote and develop squash at grassroots level and to identify and nurture young talent.

But the academies in Pakistan usually take a few ready-made players from different cities or provinces and those ready-made players may exhibit special talent for a short time but they can’t give podium performances consistently at national or international level.

Therefore, these academies don’t have any back-up squad for the future, and they also don’t have qualified coaches with modern teaching style. Hence all such academies and coaching programmes are bound to fail since they are ignoring these two main aspects.

This is the reason these academies are failing to produce high-performance players. Jahangir Khan launched an academy in Karachi a few years ago with the help of a businessman but it was shut down after a few months due to the above-mentioned reasons.

The solution is to learn the modern techniques of teaching and follow them properly. At the same time, there is a need to have a large base of qualified coaches, especially in schools and sports clubs, to properly develop every player’s long-term potential.