It is the most eagerly anticipated part of the draw in any major championship and the British Open quarter-finals are upon us at last.

Yet ahead of the 2023 edition of the ‘Wimbledon of Squash’ one of the major talking points was the amount of injuries having been sustained by many of the pre-tournament title contenders.

With Mohamed ElShorbagy and new No.1 Diego Elias both toiling ahead of the opening salvos being fired in Birmingham and Ali Farag on the comeback trail, Mostafa Asal’s ban meant he did not even make the starting line-up for the game’s oldest major.

Jahangir Khan, the record 10-time British titlist, has shared his belief that the reason behind the stricken being struck at the crucial part of the current campaign is down to a lack of fitness.

Indeed it is for that reason that despite Karim Abdel Gawad’s remarkable recovery from a two-year injury battle with a foot problem the Pathan has picked Paul Coll to make it a threepeat of British Opens.

As ever Jahangir got straight to the heart of the matter, telling Squash Mad: “It is a very open British Open – maybe the most open I can remember and one of the main reasons for that is injury and the fact I believe the players are not as fit as they were in my day.

“Obviously you have players with injuries they have sustained in the run in to the British in both El Shorbagy and Elias although it has been great to see them come through their early matches and then you have Farag and Gawad coming back from injury and credit to Gawad for beating ElShorbagy on Tuesday.

“But for me I don’t think the fitness levels are what they used to be and that is why they are getting more issues with injury.

“Of course the British Open was always the no.1 tournament for me. I used to prepare for it by playing the circuit around it but I also trained specifically for the British, I planned it all and trained at a different level and for two weeks I was a different man.

“I am not sure there is that level of commitment towards it these days but for 10 years I continued like that with my focus 100% on the British and it meant when I played it I was always at my best or as close as I could be.”

Taking all of that into account, and also the fact that defending champion Coll annexed the recent Canary Wharf Classic beating fellow British pre-tournament fancies Farag and Joel Makin en route to record his first major title win since last year’s British, it is perhaps no surprise Jahangir is tipping the Kiwi to take a bow come Sunday afternoon at The Rep.

Coll moved serenely past Saurav Ghosal, and there was no sign of any issues with a troublesome adductor, ahead of Thursday’s quarter-final with Marwan ElShorbagy, leaving the great Khan to suggest: “Once you have won it you have that experience and it is vital and not to be underestimated. Also with Paul Coll winning at Canary Wharf it is very good timing for him with him also being the defending champion.

“He beat some very good players there, physically he is very strong and mentally he is very determined and he has made it to the quarter-finals comfortably.

“So with the experience he has of winning the last two years he is going to be a very hard man to beat.”

Jahangir first burst on the professional squash scene as a 16-year-old force of nature in 1979 and by 1983 at the age of 20 he was already World No.1, British Open Champion, and a double World Champion.

Yet the 1983 British Open title, which was to be the second of his 10 championships, has a special significance for him in that to this day he maintains he won it before he even trod the boards at the Derby Assembly Rooms.

Jahangir revealed: “Before the British in ’83 I beat Gamal Awad in the final of the Chichester Open in a match that lasted 2 hrs 46 minutes and was the longest match ever. In fact if I recall the first game was a record for the longest single game and I think Awad came back from 1–8 down to take the game. (10–9 in 1 hour and 11 minutes.)

“But I came through in the end (9–10, 9–5, 9–7, 9–2) in 2 hours and 46 minutes and Gamal was never the same man because of that.”

Indeed he was not and Awad, who tragically died at just 49 and was nicknamed the “rubber man” was just that when the duo faced off a week or so later in the British Open final. “Everyone was talking about that match before we got to the British and people expected it to be the same in the final there but when I beat him in Chichester I could see it in his eyes that I had him,” recalled Jahangir.

“I was able to prove I was the stronger and the fitter and when we got to the final of the British I decided I would make the first rally a long one to really test his resolve.

“But I knew right away that he was not the same man I had played in Chichester and that I had already broken him.

“It felt like he was just hanging around on the court and there was no effort there, no fire and it was done in less than 35 minutes.

“I had always trained hard but because of that win over Awad (9-2, 9-5, 9-1) no one knew what my capacity was and I suppose I didn’t even know then.

“When I got to the end of that match I thought maybe it was one hour or 1 ½ hours but then they told me I had broken the record, well that day I knew for sure how fit I was and it gave me a lot of confidence.

“Because of that win at the Chichester Open I got a lot of victories before I even stepped on court but of all of these that British Open final in 1983 was the most important by far, really it was won before I even walked on court thanks to what happened at Chichester and that made it one of the most important victories of my career.”

Jahangir has been a lifelong user of Unsquashable rackets, and shortly through Combaxx Sports, he revealed his products will once again be available: “The Unsquashable brand based in Pakistan and Dubai, will be selling my Unsquashable products like rackets and shoes online and I am very excited about this prospect.

“A lot of people have asked me over the years about playing with my Unsquashable racket and now with the new technology and new designs that is something I am really looking forward to happening.”