Chris Walker, India’s new squash coach and former world no. 4, is sitting naked. A few carefully arranged squash balls save the blushes. It was for a photoshoot in the ‘80s. An ingenious idea from a photographer friend to attract potential clothing sponsors; he was UK’s No. 1 player then, and without an apparel contract. So why not strip? “It worked, I got one immediately!”
Walker is sitting on the toilet pot. The Queen of England is waiting for him in the squash court to inaugurate the tournament. When he eventually saunters out, a panicking sentry yells, “I have found him!” And asks him to rush along. “The Queen waits while Walker sat on the throne,” ran a headline in the Evening Standard the next day. Walker laughs at the memory.
He is trying his best to work around the pandemic hurdles to coach the Indians — “I have high hopes and confidence that we can do something special” — but that’s in the future. It’s his past that fascinates us for now. A long career that allowed him a close peek at the greatness of the squash sultans from Pakistan: Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan in the end 80’s and early 90’s, and his gruelling battle against David Palmer in the 2001 British Open final which he lost after leading 2-0 that he still revisits now and then. But before we go to Birmingham 2001 for some masochism, it’s best to travel to Karachi 1993 for some awe.
The greatest squash player ever, Pakistan’s Jahangir Khan awaited him in the world cup semi-final. “Jahangir would break down the opponents — mentally and physically. All-out attack, relentless, you can feel him breathing down your neck. Nothing remained of you by the end of a match against him. You might just have won a few points in games but he would have so brutally left you gasping for breath. It was sensational,” Walker gushes.
At his pomp, over an astonishing five-and-half years, Khan never lost a match, winning a ridiculous 555 matches in a row. A miracle that people gathered around the glass walls in courts around the world to catch a glimpse. Around this time, Channel 4, a television network from the UK, sent their man to Khyber Pass in Pakistan along with Khan to retrace his story. A scene stands out. Men sit hunched around, rifles slanted on their shoulders. Uncles, neighbours, friends of Khan’s older relatives. What do they make of Khan? “Achaa hai, ab jawaan hai. Aage jaake acha khiladi banega! (Good, he is young, will become better in the future!),” says one. The documentary host convulses into a gobsmacked-laughter, a gentle grin stretches out from Khan’s lips. No wonder, he racked up 555 triumphs; they don’t get easily swayed in the mountains.
But in ’93, the reporting grapevine those days was that Khansaab had come out of retirement to play in the tournament. “I am playing 60% for the crowds here,” Khan would say ahead of the game. Walker had played him a few times before, lost all, but was faster; at 26, three years younger than Khan; and thought it might be his great chance, yet. Plus, the Karachi court was a “dead” one, and “it suited me, I thought”. Khan was up and away in a flurry though Walker would win one game and it was 1-2.
“The court was dead and I thought now my better fitness would prove to be the difference.” But the balls went a bit limp, soft, after 45 minutes of Khan pummelling them, life slowly ebbing away from them. “Now, there wasn’t much bounce. That threw me off. But Jahangir went all out with his shots. I don’t know how he did, but he did. It was hard to get the ball back at times. He played so many shots.” It was over in a blink, Walker run ragged, but his pride was intact. “I once read a book by my squash hero Jonah Barrington, ‘Murder in the Squash Court – The Only Way to Win’, on my way to a tournament and carried away by the sheer bloodymindedness described in the book, I won that tournament. Jonah is of course right. It’s a bloody gruelling sport, you do get murdered. Khan did me in, all right!”
The most bruising loss though, the one that he still revisits in his life every now and then with a wince, is the 2001 loss in the British Open final against David Palmer. He was leading 2 games to love, but would run out of gas to lose the next three. “I still think about it. British Open was my childhood dream; it was the trophy I so wanted.” Still, it was a miraculous run that year. Unsure about his future, he had taken time away from the sport, choosing to travel around the world for six months.
“The love for the game was back at the end of the trip and I began training. I had to go through the qualifying rounds also that year to make it to the main draw. I had a couple of draining five-sets in the tournament and I guess I was finished physically by the final.” It was pretty visible in the match. For the first two games, he was all over Palmer, mixing his drop shots, volleys, pace-and-cross-court-angle changes but once the fatigue set in and Palmer started to run him down, the match began to slip away.
Considering that he was evaluating his career just a year before the tournament, it was an astonishing accomplishment. “Still, I was leading 2-0 …” There is a pause in the WhatsApp call and it isn’t due to the internet buffering. The question blurts out, “Are you still haunted by it?” Walker refutes but admits it does rankle him. “But I did play and beat Palmer in a match next year. So, that was a nice feeling, I had had my