Eat more squash.

Check out this reasonably new ad for PETA Europe featuring none other than British squash player James Willstrop.

According to James, "meat has no place in a professional athlete's body". The ad goes on to say, "Since I stopped eating meat, I'm faster, I have more energy, and I know that my decision has saved countless animals' lives."

All well and good but I'm sure some of my female readers would've have been happier if James had opted to star in a "Fur? I'd rather go naked" poster.

If you can't eat meat then try Fudge. (Good design is never a problem for athletes:) The jpeg below is a screen-grab of James' new website. (Click it to see it full size.)

You might recognize the style as reminiscent of the England Squash and Racketball Association's new website, that I wrote about in September '09, and there's a good reason: Both were designed by the agency known online as "Made By Fudge".

As cool as this site looks I can't help but notice that James' site is suffering from the same kind of content issues that plague the ESRA site. The "news" page looks like a draft version with the same photo used for the first six posts and the "download" page has only one desktop wallpaper (no photo credit) and the dreaded "coming soon" tag.

That said, these two websites are quite simply gorgeous and set the bar for squash sites all over the world. (Even if it's only in aesthetics:)

What ever happened to "Squashette"?

I have come to the realization that, though I rarely lob, I will never be able to fit a full size squash court in my basement but I'm pretty sure I have room for "Squashette"!

I found this photo on Corbis Images' website and it is entitled "Men Play Miniature Squash". It's a demonstration of "Squashette" given by George Lyttleton Rogers (r) and Mr W. J. Collier. The photo was taken in 1937 in Dulwich, London, UK and is decribed as "backing squash available to the masses". I love that they're playing in pants. Gonna have to try that this week in league.

Google let me down when I tried to find out anything about the two players shown and there's a dearth of info on the net about this sub-species of the game even on Wikipedia!

This photo, on the other hand, could very well have been taken at the Dulwich Squash Club which has been a members-owned club since 1867.

Drop me a line if you know more about "Squashette".


Another awesome photo I found on Corbis is this one of British squash champion Charles Arnold playing squash on rollerskates! Crazy. In 1926 Mr. Arnold wrote one of the first books on squash called "The Game of Squash Racquets" and you can buy a signed copy of it here (#52 on the list) for £250!



















The last shot I wanted to share was this 1958 classic of Mohibullah Khan, the brother of Jansher. (Read more about the Khan dynasty at SquashSite or at Pakistan Paedia.)

Don't try this at home: