I make it a point in every player interview I do on the Squash Radio Podcast ( subscribe & share) to ask if they have more information than the squash public does, seeing that, you know, it affects their life pretty dramatically and if switching what country you are going to represent for the rest of your life is important, just a modicum of insider intelligence would probably be appreciated. To a person, they have told me “no”. I picture Amina Orfi and Mo Zakaria landing in Doha next year expecting to be picked up in a limo and whisked to the nearest squash center, and having to text Jonathan Power asking where their ride is, only to receive a “new number, who dis” reply.

This past week saw another squash streak reach historic heights. Mohamed El Shorbagy surpassed Nicol David’s long standing record, celebrating his 770th week inside the top 10 of the PSA world rankings. 770 weeks! The last time MES was outside the Top 10 was was November of 2010! To appreciate how long ago this was, the IPad had just been invented and Instagram was less than a month old!

While press releases and headlines ballyhooing the next groundbreaking idea that is going to move the sport forward are great, results are the only thing that matter. Movie lots are made up of facades, with no real structure behind them, and while that may be cool for ten days of Olympic squash, real foundations are needed to keep our sport alive. “Going for Gold” may be a great tagline, but, in this case, it’s certainly a huge step backward.

I do know that if the Yankee brass ever do step outside their bubble and move on from Brian Cashman, they most likely will not “keep him on staff to support onboarding and transition efforts to ensure a seamless handoff, building on the strong foundation that he shaped over the past two and a half decades”. It’s unclear what purpose that would serve.

There is no “First Take” for squash ( Stephen A going at Diego Elias for quitting multiple times on court would be amazing btw!) so podcasts have been filling the void. The idea behind the Squash Podcast Network is to cross promote and increase exposure for these shows.