Hashim Khan

Who is Hashim Khan?

Hashim Khan is a former squash player from Pakistan. He won the British Open seven times between 1951 and 1958 and is considered as one of the greatest athletes of all times.

Hashim Khan was born in Nawakille, a small village near Peshawar, in Pakistan to an ethnic Pashtun family. The year of his birth is usually reported as 1916, though this has been disputed. Khan's father, Abdullah Khan, was the Head Steward at club in Peshwar where British army officers stationed in the area played squash. As a youngster, Khan served as an unpaid ball boy at the club, retrieving balls that were hit out of court by the officers. When the officers had finished playing, Khan and the other ball boys would take over the courts.

In 1942, Khan became a squash coach at a British Air Force officers' mess. In 1944, he won the first All-of-India squash championship in Bombay, and successfully defended this title for the next two years. When Pakistan became an independent state, he was appointed a squash professional at the Pakistan Air Force, and won the first Pakistani squash championship in 1949.

In 1950, Abdul Bari, a distant relative of Khan's who had chosen to remain in Bombay after the partition of India and Pakistan, and who Hashim had beaten in several tournaments in India before partition, was sponsored by the Indian Government to play at the British Open where he finished runner-up to the Egyptian player Mahmoud Karim. This spurred Khan to seek backing to compete in the British Open the following year.