Anahat Singh- New sensation

[jayakris]

I don't follow squash much at all, but thought that over the past couple of decades Pakistan had gone away from being much of a factor in squash. I may be wrong. Or maybe not, based on the posts above!

[arjun2761]

Pakistan is a dysfunctional corrupt country. So things like age cheating or other kinds of cheating (condoned by their authorities) should not be a surprise to anyone. Mind you, some of that is also true for India but I think India has better governance systems and institutions even if they are also tainted by corruption.

[Atithee]

Yes, the days of Khans ruling the squash world are long gone. Neither Pakistan nor India appear in top players now. Totally dominated by Egyptians, especially in men.

[prasen9]

In Urdu, hatami means last or the limit. Dead is a manifestation of that. So, limitless could be derived from that too.

The word "anaahat" comes straight from Sanskrit and it has nothing to do with Urdu; unless Urdu has borrowed "hata" from Sanskrit. That is typically not the case with Urdu words, I think.

Urdu is basically Hindi+ a bit of Persian+misc. I say misc because in all Indian languages we have words from Arabic, Turkish, etc. but these are negligible in number. Most Urdu words come from Sanskrit. The language should be called Hindustani with dialects in different areas. But, of course, Pakistanis want a language of their own without whole sale language change, like the artificial revival of Hebrew or something except they did not really have a Hebrew-like language to start with. So, it is Hindustani written in a different script and called a different name. Basically, packaging.

[prasen9]

Pakistan is a dysfunctional corrupt country. So things like age cheating or other kinds of cheating (condoned by their authorities) should not be a surprise to anyone. Mind you, some of that is also true for India but I think India has better governance systems and institutions even if they are also tainted by corruption.

And, this is corroborated when you have waves of junior champions but no senior champion. A junior champion is not always guaranteed to be a great senior but if you have tons of juniors, then you expect one among them to pan out. If none do, then there must have been some age cheating or other type of corruption.

[sameerph]

^^^ I assumed that those like the Egyptians would be tough to overcome for Olympic Golds but maybe a bronze medal or something a couple of Olympics later?

I do not follow squash that closely but at 16 Anahat seems to be the youngest in top 100 of womens rankings. So, there can be some hope.

When I look at top 50, there are only 2 teenagers in it and average age is 26. So, we should not expect anything from Anahat at LA 2028 when she will be around 20, maybe at 2032 olympics we can hope for some miracle. A medal at next Asian games could be possible and if she does that at 18 will be a good indication of progress.