Jahangir Khan
Sarah Fitz-Gerald
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Jahangir Khan leads 3 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Jahangir Khan at #1 and Sarah Fitz-Gerald at #11.
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The case for Jahangir Khan
The holder of the longest winning streak in professional sport: 555 consecutive matches unbeaten over five years and eight months, from a British Open final loss to Geoff Hunt in November 1981 until Ross Norman beat him in the 1986 World Open final in Toulouse. He had already won the world amateur title at 15 and the World Open at 17 in 1981, still the youngest men's world champion. He finished with six World Opens and ten consecutive British Opens from 1982 to 1991, sixteen majors in all, built on a length game so accurate and a fitness base so deep that opponents described facing him as an interrogation rather than a match. His 1983 win over Gamal Awad lasted 2 hours 46 minutes, the longest recorded competitive squash match. Son of the great Roshan Khan and nephew of Hashim, he later served as president of the World Squash Federation. No one else in squash combines that peak with that duration.
The case for Sarah Fitz-Gerald
Five World Open titles — in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2002 — put Fitz-Gerald behind only Nicol David and Nour El Sherbini in the history of the women's world championship, and she added a British Open crown to go with them. Her career divides in two: three straight world titles in the late 1990s, then a serious knee injury and a comeback that produced two more at an age when most players of the period had retired. She reached world number one in 1996 and returned to it after the injury, a rare double ascent. Fitz-Gerald was known for a compact, low-error game and exceptional composure in deciding games, and she was central to Australia's dominance of the World Team Championship through the 1990s. She later moved into coaching and administration and served on the World Squash Federation's board during the sport's Olympic campaign.