We know Egypt has been making squash a priority and they have certainly reinforced that with the number of current world ranked players.   This trend will continue while they have juniors to follow behind Shabana and Ashour.  It is a fact that the more players you involve, especially the larger the junior base, the more players exposed,  the greater chance of producing a champion. 

It is not the numbers alone but the infrastructure behind the players.  Imagine how competitive the competitions are when there is such density; the keenness for each player to improve; every match played will be of high intensity developing a mental and physical toughness.  Tbis in turn forces the coaches to become more professional in their approach to training and competing, etc.  That then makes the coaches more competitive as they strive to get their players into the rankings, whether it be at club, regional, state or national level.  Good healthy rivalry.

Imagine how stoked Australia was in the 1980's when they won the Mens Junior Teams in Canada, and also had Chris Robertson and Rodney Martin play the world singles finals. Add Rodney Eyles to that troupe to take out the World Junior Teams Trophy.  That put Aussie on the map for more than twenty years as there was a contingent of envious players who did not make the team anxiously waiting back home.

Well done Egypt, you have done enough ground work now to last many many years.

My point, every time a court is knocked down the player base is reduced, and so on.

 

 

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I'm not convinced that the number of courts has as much to do with how many stars a country produces.

We already know that many world class players move to different countries to train with the best coaches in the world. I guess if we had the stats of the highest number of highly qualified coaches we'd see a different story. I mean take a look at America compared to Wales. They have more than 10 times the courts and more than 50 times the populus, but have never really produced any true "stars" (unlike Wales who have had 2 top 5 ranked players in the past 5 years).

 

Perhaps coaching player a huge part, mixed with school links, court availability, national funding etc.

 

Adz

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There are a few differences I guess with Pakistan - take the name of Khan out of the players and how many are left?

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But like most things, it is not always so, Pakistan being an example, ie only 458 courts which is very similar to Colombia at 450, how many champion players are found in each of those countries ?

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