Squash: New rule plea over injuries

LEADING professional players are suffering so many serious injuries that they want to shorten the scoring system on the world circuit, writes Richard Eaton. A radical change - a point per rally system up to only nine points per game - will be recommended during next week's World Open in Johannesburg, and if it is adopted it would substantially reduce the length of top-class matches.

The past 18 months have seen all five of the world's leading men spend time away from the circuit because of injuries, and the new measures have now become a priority, according to Roger Eady, the Executive Director of the International Squash Players' Association. A 90-minute match would be reduced to about 50 minutes if this alteration was made.

Eady's next task is to persuade the International Squash Rackets Federation, the sport's governing body, that an experimental scoring system to nine-up, originally proposed to make the professional game more attractive to spectators, should now be tried for the sake of the health of the players.