Squash must fight off the big squeeze

THE FINAL WORD

Welwyn Garden City. A genteel commuter town. Nice tree-lined streets. A bit middle class. To be honest, a bit dull. And absolutely the last place where you would expect three of the world's top 10 players to be in genuinely competitive action on a routine Monday night.

But there they were. Three of the world's finest squash players: Del Harris (No 6), Chris Walker (No 7) and Mark Chaloner (No 9), collectively known as the ICL LionHerts (the capital letter in the middle is vital, as of course are the three precious ones at the front), and the leaders of the national league. They are also, in another guise - England - the world champions.

And there we spectators were, as well. Not very many of us, it has to be said. At the scheduled start time of the LionHerts' match against the romantically named Jim Hall Sports Northern just five seats in the seven banked rows of 10 cinema-style seats behind the perspex back wall of the court were occupied. Plainly a short delay was the expected norm, but even when the match did begin not all the seats (pounds 10 a go) were full, and neither was the standing area at the back. Twickenham for England v Wales it most certainly was not, yet in front of this uninspiring back-drop these experts were plying their trade - murderously.

Top-flight squash has never been in better health in this country. The success of the Welwyn Garden City Three in the World Championships, where Simon Parke made up the four-strong England team, is expected to be the start of a prolonged run. Chaloner, who is 23, is the shooting star of the world game, Harris, 26, can beat anyone if the mood is upon him.

Surprisingly good viewing it is too. The common image of squash is the rather pedestrian-looking game you occasionally get a five-minute glimpse of on Grandstand between Football Focus and the 1.30 from Haydock. In fact, the power and pace in such a tiny space give it a truly theatrical feel. In pure spectating terms, television does not do favours for many sports, but few suffer as badly as squash. So, not surprisingly, the moguls are reluctant to pump their millions (or even thousands in this case) into something which can make Emmerdale look pacy, and the sport cannot climb on to the gravy train.

This is just one of squash's big problems.

Another could be seen from the briefest of walks around the home of the LionHerts, the Herts Country Club, which is considerably less grand than it sounds. Squash, of course, was one of the boom sports of the Seventies and early Eighties. As much a fashion as a sport, it spawned a rash of shatteringly ugly sports centres around the country, and gave us shell suits, pints of orange juice and lemonade and underpinned the whole early growth of the "health and fitness" movement.

And then it got left behind. As the H and F craze mushroomed with aerobics, dance, the whole gamut of gym work-outs, poor little squash became the forgotten child.

The results are all too obvious at the Herts Country Club. A corridor which used to look down on squash courts either side now houses half the number of courts (and even those are not fully used), while the others are now dance studios and a gym. The bar - once the home of the trendies - is now inhabited mostly by middle-aged men in suits. In the clubs, a sport which was always regarded as the province of the superfit is, it seems, no longer a young man's game.

There is, comes the message, no money to be made in squash clubs any more - not enough people want to play it. Convert your courts into something people want to use. The bubble has burst.

By the richest of ironies, just as the game is catching fire at the top level, it is hard to detect anything but dying embers elsewhere.

We are witnessing something of a sociological phenomenon. A sport which once persuaded a sizeable chunk of the population to hurtle round a little room chasing a rubber ball until they were in real danger of a heart attack is now left contemplating a future on the outside of the television explosion and with its nationwide playing base crumbling.

It is a bleak vision. But there may be a way of avoiding this apparently inevitable decline. Jansher Khan, the great Pakistani player, is the undisputed world champion - has been for years. Suppose, and it is not too fanciful, that young Mark Chaloner keeps on exploding the squash rankings and wins the World Championship in the not too distant future. Recognition and media focus would follow, television could decide to find a way of showing it, and tomorrow might yet not be all bad.

And there was Chaloner thinking he was only playing for his livelihood.