Azam Khan: An ‘accountant’ with an assassin’s instinct

The Covid-19 pandemic is like the War. Among the many it claims – jazz musicians, saxophone greats, working class actors, forgotten sportspersons -- most get reduced to a footnote, to be mourned when the smoke clears and the world begins to pick up the pieces. So, it was when news came that Azam Khan had succumbed to the virus in a London hospital last week.He was 95.
Azam Khan was a legend of Pakistan squash, a true great in an overcrowded array of Pakistani squash maestros. Described as the ‘Accountant,’ by most estimates, Azam was the finest ever player of the tight court and tighter corners. But, as the old sporting joke goes, he may not even have been the best player in his own family.
A Feb 2019 article in UK-based web magazine, DESIblitz.com quotes former international Johan Barrington from his 1982 book, Murder in the Squash Court: “If Hashim was the most devastating savage of the great Khans, and Roshan the most beautiful stroke player, Azam would have been the little accountant, methodically arranging all the bits and pieces of the game, having everything under close analysis, nothing out of place. He was totally silent on court, like a little bird.”
These names were family. Hashim Khan, was Azam’s brother, 11 years his senior. A squash Hafeez Qardar of sorts, Hashim is generally considered as the pioneer of the sport as Pakistan would dominate the sport for almost nearly half a century from late 1950 onwards. Roshan Khan was a second cousin. Roshan’s son was one Jahangir Khan.
“There was also Mohibullah Khan Senior, he was Hashim and Azam’s nephew,” Jahangir tells TOI from Karachi. “Together these four men ruled world squash in the ’50s and the laid the groundwork for me and Jansher,” says the man, a six-time world champion and record 10-time British Open winner, and one who is generally be regarded as greatest squash player of all time.
All hailed from the Nawa Kille Payan village outside the garrison town of Peshawar. “We are one big family – brothers, uncles, cousins. And we are Pashtuns, we don’t leave anything easily that we get after,” laughs Jahangir of the semi-professional era and the great rivalry between the four. A four-time British Open champion, Azam’s streak from 1959 to 1962 also boasts of a wildly one-sided 9-1, 9-0, 9-0 scoreline over Roshan Khan for his first title. “Oh, my waalid saab had a bad knee that season,” Jahangir, airily dismisses the query about his father, but Barrington provides some insight on what may have been. “He (Azam) was unbelievably efficient … he constantly sucked you into situations from which it was impossible to extricate yourself,” he writes in his book.
Jahangir is effusive about Azam’s legacy. “He was the leading light in putting Pakistan on the sporting map of the world. What’s more, the situations he overcame, the facilities they had in those days, to do what he did is simply phenomenal. Raising money to travel abroad was very difficult. Going to England was like scaling a mountain back then. Yet, these men persisted,” adds Jahangir. So close were the rivalries and so hotly followed that the famous 1959 final verdict caused anger among spectators for it’s extremely brief duration, many of whom had barely settled in their seats when it was already over. Pakistan media remembers how organisers had to hastily devise a third-place play off to placate the spectators. It gave an indication of Pakistan’s love for squash and the adulation for Pakistani squash stars.
Squash in Pakistan was a British army hand me down. Centered around the cantonment culture in Peshawar, the sport grew with local boys observing the officers playing the game. “Remember, they all began as ball boys either in tennis or squash. They would watch the British officers play and carried the game to our homes, to our villages.” Originally a tennis player, Azam switched to squash at the advice of his older brother. Money was meagre and Azam Khan himself left his employment as ‘electrician’ – Rs 100 per month -- in the Pakistan Air Force since he was demoted to ‘porter’, subsequently to move to the UK as coach at New Grampians Club. Azam’s personal legacy continued in the form of granddaughter Carla who was top British pro in the 2000s.
Despite the familial familiarity, it is possible that Jahangir may not have felt the need for a deeper acquaintance with Azam. “He belonged to my father’s age group, so you know, as boys we stayed away,” he remembers, “But yes, I’d meet him at each British Open. He was a regular feature there ever since he moved to London in 1956. We would visit his club in London’s Shepherd’s Bush too. I hear it shut down a while ago.”
It was the other, the “outsider,” however, who recalls Azam more fondly. A second-generation squash player, the Peshawar-born Jansher is not related to the Khans from Nawa Kille Payan, but feels a closer affinity to Azam. “I learnt how to grip the racquet from him,” he tells TOI, recalling how he met Azan for the first time in 1984 when he had come for the junior British Open. “He always had a tip or two whenever we would go for the British Open. He was always there.
“I remember he’d told me, ‘Jansher if you’re not 100% fit you cannot succeed in squash.’ It was a strange thing to say because his game was usually so tactical, but I hung on to it all through my career. I decided that if I ever lost in squash, it would not be due to my opponent being fitter to me. When I beat Jahangir for the first time in 1987, I realised it was because I was more fit and could last longer in the long games. His tip worked,” says the eight-time world champion.