Heather McKay
Jansher Khan
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Heather McKay leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Heather McKay at #2 and Jansher Khan at #3.
The case for Heather McKay
The most complete domination in the history of any racket sport. McKay lost exactly two competitive matches in her entire career, both in 1962, and was never beaten again — a run of roughly nineteen unbeaten years. She won sixteen consecutive British Opens from 1962 to 1977, when the British Open was the sport's world championship in all but name, and then won the first two Women's World Opens in 1976 and 1979, giving her eighteen major titles. She also won the Australian championship fourteen times. Her superiority was so absolute that contemporaries struggled to describe her weaknesses, and when she retired she switched codes and won the women's world racquetball championship as well. The standard argument against her is field depth: women's squash in the 1960s was smaller and less professional than the men's game. The standard answer is that she never lost to anyone, for two decades, in any of it.
The case for Jansher Khan
The most successful player in World Championship history on the men's side, with eight titles between 1987 and 1996 — one more than Jahangir managed — plus six consecutive British Opens from 1992 to 1997, for fourteen majors. He also accumulated the highest career total of professional tour titles in the men's game, widely cited at 99. No relation to the Khan dynasty of Nawakille despite the name, he lost his first six meetings with Jahangir and then rebuilt his game around retrieval and patience until he had turned the rivalry around; across 37 career meetings the two finished within a match of each other. His style was the purest expression of squash as attrition: extraordinary court coverage, minimal risk, and a willingness to let rallies run until the opponent broke. Injuries and the demands of that method shortened his peak, but between 1992 and 1996 he was effectively unbeatable and closed out Pakistan's four-decade grip on the sport.