Both players showed amazing racket skills, speed, agility, stamina, anticipation, court coverage, and accuracy. It was like watching lightening in a bottle. Great game.
The ref at the end was definitely making a lot of errors at Jansher's expense. He was out of his league referring that game. You could see he was nervous. And that led to the repeated let decisions when he should have decided on No Let or Stroke. Notice how most of his decisions were Lets? Very poor refereeing.
Never seen Thierry so happy to win, he is truly one of the all time greats. Barker is a very tough lefty and has played against some of the best in the world.
Thierry is such a fluid mover is just like hopping here and there and everywhere. The constantly backing commentators made it quite irritating all the time tilting their commentary in powers favors and last of all there were few extremely pathetic decisions by the referees though understandable from the pov of those days
Every shot Thierry plays is so unpredictable as to where it is going that kept Shabana unsettled and on the run most of the times but after the first game Thierry lost his touch and from the third Shabana was mostly in control though he was still busy guessing Thierry's next shot
That was an entertaining match. I couldn’t help but crack up some of the times Gaultier smashed the tin when he had an easily winning shot. Not hitting the tin so much is something Gaultier really improved upon later in his career. The refereeing was pretty poor. Far too many lets. Didn’t set the right tone to make the players clear, which should be done from the beginning of the match. Just give a warning and stroke if necessary, and they’ll clear like rabbits.
It’s great to see these matches, especially when you can see the ball. This must be shortly before Palmer retired. I was fortunate to get to see him play live. One area where the reffing has improved is they used to give lets for anything, whereas now a lot of these would be no lets, which makes for better viewing.
Squash is a horrible game. It makes competitors hate each other, and the umpires as well. Squash is nice to play socially against friends or practice alone on a court for fitness. How do I know? After many decades, and knowing that competitors are not home friends. Many tennis players and athletes etc were frieds.
Great match, really insightful to hear from the coaches during the match and then see if the players can implement the advice. Giving up the fourth game often portends fifth game defeat in my experience!
Always a treat to see Ramy's wizardry with the racket, I also enjoyed White's crocodile-like tranquility switching into incredible power and creativity. Not such a fan of him hitting the ball out of the court repeatedly, or the slightly breathless commentary.
That was delightful. Palmer always seemed to take soft lets and in this match he looked like he was blocking access whenever he hit something weak as well - still can you blame him when the refs pandered to it? Amazing calmness from 10-6 down in the fifth, his share of the $100k prize fund on the line, Palmer goes straight through to 12-10. Great to see a young(er) John Mozzarella in the chair too :D
Palmer was superb in games 2 and 3 then ran out of gas (he retired not long after). I love his technique on the backhand side lifting topspins then taking volleys off the side wall. Class.
sry Power, I know you re a great player and that you're way more mature now and changed, but you do come off here as an arrogant jerk. The John McEnroe of squash. Talented as hell, but a mouthtful 😂
