Hashim Khan was born in the village of Nawakille, near Peshawar, in the area that constitutes the present Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. His date of birth is listed as 1st July 1914, but there are no formal records to confirm this and many of his family think that it could have been earlier. His father Abdullah Khan was the Chief Steward at the Peshawar Club and a good tennis and squash player who introduced his son to these sports.

When Hashim was just eight years old he started accompanying his father to the club. On one of these visits Hashim was sitting on the back wall of one of the squash courts when a young British officer misjudged a hard shot and the ball flew out of the court. The officers were not in the habit of retrieving the ball themselves and asked Hashim to fetch it for them. He eagerly obliged and repeated the task four or five times during the evening. The following day this happened again and the officers decided to hire Hashim as a regular ball boy. He now had a job and would go to the club each day on his way back from school, earning a salary of five rupees a month.

Hashim developed a liking for the game and when the officers would go off the court to shower and change for dinner, he along with the other boys would use the opportunity to play between themselves with cracked rackets and broken balls. Because of his young age and small size Hashim would hold the racket well up the handle. Playing barefoot he developed the attributes of speed and a good eye, anticipating his opponent’s shots by watching their wrist movement and invariably retrieving the ball from all parts of the court.

When he was only eleven years old tragedy befell the family. His father was killed in a road accident and Hashim left school a year later to work full time at the Peshawar Club as a ball boy and court cleaner. The professional coach at the club was Abdul Majeed, a friend of Hashim’s late father. Majeed’s assistant was his son Ismatullah and Hashim was soon appointed as an apprentice under him. His game improved rapidly and his remarkable stamina, court speed and ball control were noticed by the officers. In his book ‘The Khan Game,’ Hashim recalls “Now some British officers watch me in courts .. and they begin to say, ‘Give me a game, please, Hashim. I am delighted.” The ball boy had become a proper squash player.

In 1942 Majeed recommended Hashim for the position of a tennis and squash coach at the Royal Air Force base in Peshawar and Hashim took up this position at a salary of fifty rupees a month. Majeed was by now related to Hashim as his younger son Safirullah, a excellent squash player himself, had married Hashim’s sister. Incidentally one of Majeed’s sisters married yet another squash and tennis player from Nawakille called Faizullah Khan and gave birth to two sons Roshan Khan and Nasrullah Khan. This was the link that tied Hashim and Roshan Khan’s families together into one, with Majeed being a central figure.

In 1944 the Air Force sponsored him to play in the All-India Squash championship in Mumbai. The courts in Mumbai were indoor and had wooden floors. These were new features for Hashim, as also was the presence of spectators. He practiced for two days to adapt and comfortably made his way to the finals where he met the Indian champion Abdul Bari, who was also a distant relative. Bari was renowned for his drop shots. Recalling the match in his book, Hashim writes in his basic English “Bari had best soft shot I see anywhere. This how he makes points. But I am light like a fly, 112 pounds only and never before does he see me run. I watch close. When I see him start with wrist to make that drop shot, that moment I am on way to front. He thinks I am never in time, he relaxes. Abdul Bari is relaxing when I reach and stroke and put that ball away.” Hashim simply overwhelmed Bari and retained his title for the next two years, beating Bari on both occasions.

With the creation of Pakistan, Hashim became an employee of the Pakistan Air Force where he continued to work as a squash coach at their Peshawar base. In 1950 his old opponent Abdul Bari, reached the final of the British Open Squash championship in London, while representing India. The British Open was considered to be the equivalent of the world championship in those days and this was encouraging news for Hashim who had beaten Bari regularly. In 1951 he himself went to England, sponsored by the Pakistan Air Force. Playing in shoes for the first time he entered the Scottish Open championship in Edinburgh, and made it to the finals where his opponent was the reigning world champion Mahmoud el Karim, a tall elegant Egyptian with an attractive style of play. Hashim swept Karim aside beating him 9-0, 9-0 and 10-8.

Many experts dubbed this as a flash in the pan but shortly afterwards in the British Open, Hashim again overcame Karim beating him 9-5, 9-0, 9-0. During one particular rally in the final he retrieved his opponent’s smashes and placements 37 times until a frustrated Karim gave up and slammed the ball into the tin.

Hashim was 37 years old, well past the age of retirement of most players. He was short with a height of only 5 feet 5 inches, stocky, balding and had a little pot belly that the chief guest Prince Philip remarked on when they met. Hashim would go on to beat Karim again the following year and would win five further British Opens, the last one being in 1958 when he was an incredible 44 years old. The only gap was in 1957 when his second cousin Roshan Khan, father of the legendary Jehangir Khan, beat him in four sets.

During this period Hashim also won the British Professional Championships five times, along with three US Open titles and three Canadian Open titles. His last US Open title was won in 1963 when he was a remarkable 49 years old. There was, however, still more to come. He was the losing finalist to his nephew Mohibullah in the 1964 and 1965 tournaments as well. In his last final appearance at the US Open Hashim was 51 years old, in a sport which demands a level of extreme physical fitness that even young players find exhausting. Additionally he had also adapted his game at a late age to the hardball version of squash that is played in North America. These are unparalleled achievements.

Hashim was a thinking player. Talking about himself to a sports writer Rex Lardner, Hashim, speaking of himself in the third person, said, “When opponent likes fast game, Hashim plays slow; when opponent likes slow, Hashim plays fast. Against big man, Hashim makes him stoop to floor with low shots. Against player who rushes to front wall like tennis player rushing to net, Hashim gives plenty of lobs. Against player wearing glasses, Hashim gives many high shots, which he has difficulty seeing because of light overhead. When Hashim teaches, he emphasizes thinking.”

In the 1960’s Hashim migrated to the USA, along with his large family of a wife and twelve children, including seven sons. He initially taught squash at Detroit’s Uptown Athletics Club, but later moved to Denver where the warm, arid climate was considered better for his wife’s rheumatoid arthritis. He took up the position of a professional at the Denver Athletic Club, where as a result of his arrival the membership soared from 45 to 400. The former President of the club Hugh Tighe, who brought Hashim from Detroit to Denver once said people were envious of him because playing squash routinely with Hashim was like playing golf regularly with Jack Nicklaus.

Apart from his own formidable achievements Hashim is also known as the patriarch of the Khan dynasty of squash. He brought his younger brother Azam into the game in 1952 and within two years Azam was good enough to reach the final of the British Open in 1954 where he lost to Hashim. This was repeated in the 1955 and 1958 finals, before Azam finally won the tournament in 1959. He would win the British Open for four consecutive years from 1959-1962 as well as the US Open in 1962. Mohibullah, was the next Khan to win the British Open with his solitary victory in 1963, akin to Roshan’s sole win in 1957. Mohibullah was Hashim’s nephew and the son of his brother-in-law Safirullah. Mohibullah’s victory capped a remarkable run of thirteen straight victories for the Khan family at the British Open from 1951 to 1963. For 9 of these 13 years the losing finalist was also a family Khan.

Mohibullah also won the US Open 4 times but it was Hashim’s eldest son Sharif who really dominated the US Open hardball tournament. He won it for 12 years out of 13 between 1969 and 1981. After him came another family member, Jahangir Khan, the son of Roshan Khan, who won it thrice. Thus a member of Hashim Khan’s famous family won the US Open for 26 years out of 33 in the period from 1956 to 1988.

Jahangir, of course, won the British Open a record 10 times in consecutive years from 1982 to 1991. He also has 6 World Open titles to his credit so that these six family members, Hashim, Azam, Roshan, Mohibullah, Sharif and Jahangir have, between them, a collection of 23 British Open titles, 26 US Open titles and 6 World Open titles.

Besides these six stars Hashim’s family has produced many other eminent squash players as well. Hashim’s younger sons Aziz, Liaquat and Gulmast all played with distinction on the North American circuit. Roshan Khan’s brother Nasrullah ran the Junior Carlton Squash Club in London, and Nasrullah’s son Rehmat was Jehangir’s coach and mentor. There is also a female squash player in the family, Carla Khan, who is Azam’s granddaughter.

Hashim passed away in August 2014, a month after his hundredth birthday. In a profile of Hashim in the New Yorker magazine the well known American sports journalist Herbert Warren Wind concluded: “The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the greatest athlete for his age the world has ever seen may well be Hashim Khan.”

Dr Salman Faridi is a senior surgeon, poet, sports aficionado and an avid reader with a private collection of over 7000 books.

salmanfaridilnh@hotmail.com