The second edition of the AOH Squash Tournament was organised from Saturday, 7 to Sunday, 15 September. The first edition was held prior to COVID, and that had been a big success too.
This year saw a format change to a double-elimination knockout format which gave each player at least two chances before going out of the tournament. The idea behind the tournament was to bring together all the squash players, not only the regular players but also those hiding or were shy of playing on a daily basis or just too busy to take out the time.
The response was overwhelming. We had about 20 players that volunteered and enrolled to play. This was a totally contributory format tournament where each player contributed money towards the funding of the entire tournament expenses which included things like trophies, medals, squash balls, refreshments, first-aid kit, food and snacks.
A total of 36 hard-fought and well-cheered matches took place over one week. We were treated to quite a few amazing matches, some big upsets and innumerable fantastic rallies. The frenzy that the tournament generated within the players and their friends & family was way beyond what was expected.
It was heartening to see that the players took out time to not only come and play their own matches, but also come and cheer other players even when not themselves involved. By the time the Tournament ended, all the players seemed to want more and God willing, it will not be long before another tournament is announced with even more members participating!
The Tournament ended on Sunday, 15 September with Mayank Singh winning the Tournament, Nikhil Nadkar the 1st Runner-Up and Anshul Mathur the 2nd Runner-Up. Mukul Verdia was presented with a Captain’s award for his dedication to development of the game of Squash in AOH.
All players in the Tournament were honoured with a medal in recognition of their enthusiastic participation.
We had the privilege of having Mr. Lalit Varma to be the Chief Guest at the presentation ceremony on Sunday, where he also interacted with all the players and shared his experiences (including that of playing with the legendary Jahangir Khan).
Mr. Verma was a National Squash player for India and also played three more sports at different levels for India – cricket, golf and tennis!
The team comprising Ujjwal Sharma, Jagdish Mitra, Manish Gunthey, Abhijaat Saxena, Anshul Mathur & Mukul Verdia, helped organise this Tournament and made it a big success with enthusiastic participation in equal measure of the podium members and all the participants that included Rajat Singh, Samir Bhatia, Pravin Dubey, Alok Katariya, Abhishek Kaushik, Sanjay Lawania, Abhishek Keswani, Vikrant Sood, Anand Vijay, Prabal Punjabi & Waaris Arora.
We are already excited about the next Squash Tournament and are looking at February-March 2025 as the month to organise it.
