Baj: Superboss of Superseries
May 2, 2005, by Martin Bronstein
SquashTalk Independent News Service © 2005 all Rights Reserved;

The Superseries is in its tenth year under Satinder Bajwar’s supervision. And what a decade it has been for this unique event. The fact is that the Super Series Finals, to give it the full title, almost never survived its early years. The idea was that at the end of the PSA season, the eight players who scored most points in Super Series events would play off for the big money prize. The event was staged for a few years in Switzerland but it never quite took root and in 1996 was about to disappear from the calendar when Satinder Bajwa decided he could stage it in England. Baj (as he is know throughout the squash world) had a major card up his sleeve: Jansher Khan.

Superseries at the Broadgate Arena © 2005 Martin Bronstein

“It was in 1996 when I did the first Super Series. I had been coaching people like Adrian Ezra and Mir Zaman Gul and because of my success with Mir Zaman, I started working with Jansher - managing and mentoring him and keeping him on the straight and narrow.

“When the Superseries became available I thought I could run it with Jansher as the figurehead. I was at a tennis event in London run by Advantage, a sports promotion company, and I met a guy and told him about squash and glass courts. He was very interested and put me in touch with Equitable Life, a major financial company, who ended up sponsoring the Superseries for six years,” recalls Baj.

It was actually a lot more complicated than that. In 1999 Equitable Life was involved in a major pension scandal and had to stop trading. They were then taken over by Halifax, a bank/building society, who in turn were taken over by the Bank of Scotland. It says something for Baj’s reputation that despite the enormous problems of his original sponsor, they continued to sponsor the Superseries through all the changes of ownership.

That same year another major change took place. Baj decided to move the event from a shopping mall 40 miles north of London into the City, London’s financial district.

“We needed a better site. Equitable Life was a financial company and we decided to take the sport to the spectators in the City. All the City guys go around carrying their squash rackets and Broadgate was right in the middle of the financial district. Fortunately the owners of Broadgate, British Land, came in as presenting sponsors so they made the switch affordable,” Baj explains.

Bajwa with Hesham El Attar, Barada's Coach at the Superseries © 2005 Ron Beck

Baj became head of squash at Advantage but had to give that up when in 2000 he landed the best squash job in the world: head coach at Harvard University. The question was how could he continue to run the Superseries while doing his year-round job in Boston? The answer came in the form of Andrew White who was head of golf at Advantage but had left to set up shop on his own - White Sports Marketing (WSM)

“It was an ideal set-up. WSM would supply the marketing expertise and I could still look after the squash end from Boston. Harvard were very understanding. I think everybody benefited from the situation.”

It was through WSM that the Superseries found a new sponsor –Briti Insurance - once the contract with Bank of Scotland came to an end .

“In the first year of the Superseries ten years ago, the prize money was $30.000 this year with Brit Insurance it is $85,000. The winner takes home $20,000 which makes it the biggest prize in squash,” Baj says with some pride. He also thinks that the Superseries has become a solid part of the British sports scene.

“For the first few years we had to really sell the tickets; for the last three years the tickets go and we fill the seats. The event has become established and we have full houses from the quarter-finals on. It has become one of the London sporting events in early summer – there’s Wimbledon, there’s Queens and the Super Series. We are on the sporting calendar in Britain and last year Brit Insurance was nominated as one of the top sponsors of sport in Britain: that was due to the SuperSeries.”

It has been a long, twisting road for Satinder Bajwa. Born in India he moved to Britain at the age of 10 and studied engineering, training with British Airways to become a flight engineer. And then along came squash. He played softball but moved to the States to play the more lucrative hard-ball circuit and ran softball camps with Dave Carr (now partner in MacWil Squash Courts). His partnership with Jansher Khan rounded out his background on the playing side and now, after ten years of guiding the Superseries, Baj has become a major player in world squash. His position at Harvard adds another very important string to his bow as the squash world watches the rapid strides that the US is making in the international game.

Baj holds dual British/US citizenship and truly sits astride the Atlantic, one of the few men who truly understands the game on both sides.

The 2005 SuperSeries Finals starts on Monday May 9 at Broadgate in London. The players are seeded:

1) THIERRY LINCOU France.
2) DAVID PALMER Australia.
3) LEE BEACHILL England.
4) PETER NICOL England.
5) JAMES WILLSTROP England.
6) NICK MATTHEW England.
7)AMR SHABANA Egypt.
8) JONATHON POWER Canada.

That will be two very tough groups; And with $20,000 at stake for the winner, they will be playing seriously, never mind the ranking points.

As usual I shall be at Broadgate for all the matches, full reports will be on Squashtalk before you get home from work.

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