george bush is afraid they will blow up his country..

they dodge all these tournaments because they don't need to play them to get their ranking up, they have enough tounrments in their own country which hardly anyone wants to go to. This is why they have good rankings without beating any decent players

Put the shoe on the other foot... same reason players based in the States don't travel to Pakistan to play their events.

gonna have to disagree with mike. it has nothing to do with rankings. tournaments like the toc are worth way more points than tournaments in pakistan. i dont think there are really any pakistan players that are ranked higher than they should be.

there are pakistani players that are ranked higher than they should be because of just playing their own tournaments in pakistan, which is fine if you have an association willing to put on the events where players don't particularly want to go.Lower down the rankings aren't that accurate as i'm sure there are many players ranked higher than they should be, for a number of reasons, which i can't be bothered to go through. But once you get to the top 30 it doesn't really matter what tournaments you play as your there because your good, and i think shahid is there on merit anyway. so i mostly agree with mike, not doug

Doug you obviously don't understand how the point system works

I agree that the rankings of the Pakistani players are skewed because they only play in tournaments held in Pakistan and hence get their points and since the ranking system is based on average points and not on total points they can get away with it but once they enter tournaments outside Pakistan they don't do well. Case in point Mansoor Zaman who I think was pampered by the Squash Association in Pakistan.

There is also the factor that they do not get visas which is very sad. Imagine Jehangir and Jansher playing today and not getting visas.

The recents performance of Pakistani juniors is a good sign, Majid Khan but I do not see him playing any tournaments anymore does anyone know what happened to him? Yasir Butt is a talent but he has been losing matches he should win. Maybe the pressure of being a high seed is getting to him or maybe he has just reached his ceiling.

If the Pakistan Federation does not get these young juniors entered in tournaments in Europe and USA and also the British Leagues they will never get exposure and not be able to push themselves to get better.
Maybe Framboise can shed some light on the mindset prevelant in Pakistan Squah Assoc since she was there for the Pakistan Open and got to talk to a lot of people there? Is there hope for Pakistani players to dominate squash again or being medicore is all they can be? has the game progressed to the extent that they cannot catch back onto the bandwagon?

look at patrick bedore though. he is top 150 in the world but he's not even top 50 in canada. the reason being, he plays tons of tournaments. it's not just the pakistani players that have good rankings.

Playing in international tournaments cost thousands of dollares? That money does not grow on in trees in Pakistan. It seems very foolish to send a Pakistan player overseas only to be beat by someone in 20 minutes in the first round. There is plenty of talent in the country that taught the world how to play squash. There is no need to send kids abroad unless they can prove they are going to win.

this is the classic case of what came first, the chicken or the egg.
The players cannot improve if they cannot play against top class talent.
One can get sponors to take care of travel expenses etc. I just think that the people who run various sports associations in Pakistan just collect pay checks and do very little for their sport. Some I believe do not have any vision either.