Anahat Singh: Meet the rising star of squash
Anahat Singh was one of the fastest movers in the top 100 last season, with 12 titles from 18 Professional Squash Association events
Anahat Singh, on an average day, has plenty going on. There is school, which for a 17-year-old means impending board exams. There are friends to banter with, episodes of The Summer I turned Pretty on Amazon Prime to sneak in, two dogs Ollie and Bailey to entertain, and her hobby of painting.
There is also squash, the sport in which she is currently ranked 47 in the world, the top Indian player in the Professional Squash Association (PSA) Tour rankings. One of the fastest movers in the top 100 last season (2024-25), she had 12 titles from 18 PSA tournaments. She played nine Challenger events, winning eight of them, including a pair of Challenger 15s in India towards the end of the season. She had a 29-match winning streak, with 23 of her 36 wins coming in straight games.
“Rarely has there been a more impressive season in PSA Squash Tour History than the campaign Anahat Singh has enjoyed in 2024/25," noted an article on the PSA website. Not surprisingly, Anahat shared PSA’s young player of the season title with Egypt’s Amina Orfi in June.
Among her impressive results was a bronze medal in the World Squash Junior Championships in Cairo in July, the first Indian to get it since Dipika Pallikal in 2010.
“I saw it on Instagram, as soon as it got done," Singh says about the statistic, over a video call from her home in Delhi. “I saw a Reel which said, I think, a historic medal after 15 years or something. I was obviously really happy, but I still had a semi-final to play, so I didn’t really think about just getting a bronze…"
Her goal at the beginning of the year was to get into the top 50 rankings and now having achieved that, her targets have had to realign a bit, aiming for the top 30.
“I’m still able to have good fights with the top 20 players and the top 10 players, but after I play one good match, I’m not able to play the next as well. I feel like one thing that I really need to work on is being consistent throughout the tournament because it doesn’t end in just one match."
“I’ll definitely try to come into the top 30, if that’s realistic. That’s a goal I have in mind for sure."
CHANGING THE RACKET
Once she started playing at age 8, Singh got equally proficient in badminton and squash, following on the footsteps of older sister Amira, who was one of her first squash “coaches". She would travel to tournaments with her sister, join in on training sessions, before realising that she would have to choose between the two sports. Singh loved how creative one could be on the squash court, “play in your own style and hit whatever shots that you want".
Coached initially by Amjad Khan, later by India’s former No.1 player Ritwik Bhattacharya and Stephane Galifi, who have a training centre in Kalote-Mokashi village outside Mumbai, Singh shot up the ranks quickly. She got a gold in the under-11 category of the British Open in 2019, a silver each in the British and Malaysian juniors in 2020 and an under-15 gold in the Asian juniors in 2022. At 14, she was included in the Indian team for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022, where her teammate, among others, was Saurav Ghosal.
As the baby of the team, her teammates would call her Miss Giggles because as a first-time traveller with a team, she was really shy, laughing—nervously—at everything.
“My first impression was that she giggled a lot. Every time I spoke to her, she giggled. I didn’t know I was this funny," remembers Ghosal, laughing.
“But," he adds, “at that time she was 14. She was with a bunch of us who had played for India. She had a good combination of having respect for everyone and also holding her own. That stood out for me. Every match she went to play—she was the youngest athlete from India and so there was a spotlight on her—she went to win. She was not just happy to be there or to just make up the numbers."
When Ghosal, the only Indian to make it into the top 10 of the PSA rankings, decided to retire from competitions last year, he offered to mentor the upcoming player. Initially, he was on court with her, practising. He then moved into a wider role of working with her current coach, Gregory Gaultier (French former world champion and No.1) and JSW Sports which supports her, into choosing her tournaments well, how to train better, anything off-court that could accelerate her ascent.
The road in the women’s category will be challenging for Singh as she treads on a path few Indians have been before. Players from Egypt dominate the sport, top rankings sprinkled with a generous dose of athletes from the nation. When Singh was in Cairo for the World Juniors, competitive matches would finish post 10 in the night. But she would see little children, as young as eight years old, training after that.
“That’s one thing which really sets them apart—the number of hours they put in and the amount of effort they put in. I don’t really want to be training at 11pm, I mean," she says with a grin, “I think it’s great to see what they are doing, but everyone has different ways of being better."
IN FOR THE LONG RUN
Singh’s schedule includes being on the road for roughly half the month, playing tournaments. There are online classes when she is away, classes at Delhi’s British School when she is home. There are training sessions in the morning, maybe after school too besides all the other distractions that colour a teenager’s life.
“We felt her intensity was not as high as it needs to be," Ghosal adds about what she needs to do further. “She would turn up the intensity at certain crunch points, but it was not up there if she wanted to mix with the best on the senior level. Now she is at a point where technically she is able to do a lot of things that other girls are not able to do."
Singh has been playing squash for a decade, but the competitive nature of her relationship with the sport has not dulled its allure. She still finds it fun, loves travelling to different places. I can play for any number of hours without getting bored of it."
“I love the sport and, obviously I want to be a lot better than I am right now. Hopefully, world No.1, someday."
Arun Janardhan is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle. He posts @iArunJ.
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