Jansher Khan
Geoff Hunt
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Jansher Khan at #3 and Geoff Hunt at #5.
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.
The case for Geoff Hunt
The bridge between the amateur game and the modern professional one, and the man who beat everybody before Jahangir Khan arrived. Hunt won eight British Opens between 1969 and 1981 and the first, second, fourth and fifth World Opens in 1976, 1977, 1979 and 1980 — twelve majors — after collecting multiple world amateur titles in the late 1960s. He matched Jonah Barrington's training revolution and added a far superior technical base, and their rivalry through the 1970s defined the decade. His last great act was the 1981 British Open final, in which he beat the 17-year-old Jahangir Khan; it was the final defeat before Jahangir's 555-match streak began, and Hunt retired soon afterwards, his body worn out by the volume of work the era demanded. He later became one of the sport's most influential coaches, running Australia's national programme and shaping a generation of Australian world champions.