World Squash Awards 2006 at RAC Club: Barrington, Fernandes, Swartz, Ashour, Shabana, David

BARRINGTON EARNS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Jonah Barrington once again took his rightful place as the star of squash when he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Squash Awards in London tonight (Friday Dec 22) .

While thousands of passengers remained trapped in a fogbound Heathrow Airport in one of the worst peasoupers since smokeless fuel was introduced to London some 30 years ago, 400 glittering movers of world squash gathered in the extremely posh and very rule-bound RAC Club in Pall Mall (where the wearing of a polo shirt is banned and whites must be worn on the squash courts).

This is the second awards night produced by Eventis ( Peter Nicol, Tim Garner and Angus Kirkland) and they have got their act together very quickly. Not only did every guest get a Prince Goody bag but the awards were accompanied by video footage put on by Horizon, who hadn’t quite got their act together despite a lot of hard work.

After an hour of champagne and chat the guests moved to dinner to be entertained by the always outspoken Adrian Davies as MC. Davies played the circuit and knows the skeletons in everyone’s cupboard and is delighted to open the door and let the bones spill out. Tonight he spotlighted Chris Walker and was unmerciful in his roasting humour. That he had Walker as well as the audience hooting with laughter says much for Adrian’s winning approach to insults.

The serious stuff started with yet another tribute to Peter Nicol, which brought the poor man close to tears and the audience to a standing ovation. How many more of these tributes can Peter take?

The annual awards started with the gloriously glamorous Guyanian Nicolette Fernandes winning the Most Improved WISPA Player award and Tenille Swartz of South Africa taking the Young Female Player award.

The PSA Young Player of the Year award was between Ramy Ashour of Egypt, Peter Barker of England and Gregory Gaultier of France. (How Gaultier got into this category is beyond me; yes he is still ony 24 but he has been around an awful long time). Not surprisingly, the award went to my dinner table companion Ramy Ashour who is still only 19 and already wreaking havoc in major tournaments.

It was no surprise either when Nicol David of Malaysia was voted WISPA Player of the Year by the WISPA members. PSA player of the years was between Nick Matthew the British winner of the British Open, David Palmer and Amr Shabana.

The award obviously had to go to Shabana who has finally found a consistency to keep him in the number one spot. Sadly he was a victim of the London fog and his plane never left the ground at Cairo Airport because of no landing slots in London.

The high spot of the evening was the award to Jonah Barrington. It is widely accepted that he single-handedly started the huge squash boom in the 70’s and gave the sport a profile that it had never had before – or since. Almost every British player owns up to owing Barrington a debt of gratitude and many were guided and advised by him. The tributes came from Rex Bellamy, the doyen of British squash writers, from Peter Marshall, David Lloyd and other players.

The standing ovation was heartfelt and unprompted which almost reduced Barrington to speechlessness, but once the lump in his throat had been swallowed he gave one of his usual articulate and witty speeches, which covered his grueling matches with Geoff Hunt, is late developing son Joey and other humourous anecdotes. He is the most articulate of spokesman and I can never forgive the for PSA taking away his job as a commentator (where he was entertaining and so very knowledgeable) on their tv broadcasts and giving it to some windbag full of inanities.

Yes Jonah, everybody still remembers the debt we owe you and tonight will reassure you that your contribution to the sport will never be forgotten.

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