Sport is built on illusions. The feint, the disguise, the flick of the wrist. The little deceptions that buy you time or space - creating a faint flicker of doubt in your opponent’s mind.
Peter Marshall made a career out of deception.
Marshall competing in the 1990s
The double-handed backhand - a quirk born from childhood weakness - became a weapon of sleight and misdirection. A racket held close to the body, a body shape that revealed nothing and a swing that could send the ball in any direction until the very last moment.
“I could hit the ball with a short swing and generate power or hold it short. People couldn’t see where it was going,” he says. “Sometimes they’d go completely the wrong way.”
Against most players, this was an arsenal.
Against Jansher Khan, it was a paper sword.
“Even from the first time I played him,” Marshall recalls, “I’d try to be deceptive and it just felt like a waste of time. He knew exactly where the ball was going.”
The great Jansher Khan
There is a pause — the kind that lingers not with regret, but with awe. Because to talk about Jansher in the 1990s is to talk about inevitability.
He didn’t just read the game; he bent it to his will. He saw patterns before they were patterns. He moved before you moved. And when Marshall - perhaps the most unconventional shot-maker on tour - realised that his deception didn’t deceive, it revealed a truth he suspected but never fully understood: genius is immune to camouflage.
Jansher was more than quick. He was economical. Smooth. Silent.
Movement so efficient it bordered on the supernatural.
“I don’t think there’s been a better mover around a squash court,” Marshall says. “Most of the current players watching him on video would admit that.”
But Jansher was more than movement. He evolved. Started as a retriever, became a finisher. Understood the angles, the spaces, the psychology. Where Jahangir had thunder, Jansher had geometry.
And it’s here — in this interplay of eras — where the conversation becomes deliciously hypothetical. How would the greats combine today? What would happen if the Jansher of 1995 stepped onto a glass court in 2025, armed with lighter rackets, science-driven training and opponents raised on video analysis?
Marshall doesn’t hesitate.
“Jansher would walk straight into today’s game and be right at the top,” he says. “He might take a couple of months to adjust, but I think he’d be the dominant player.”
He rattles off the modern names with admiration - Farag, Asal, Elias, Coll - but returns always to that singular truth: greatness translates. The era changes shape, but the core remains.
“People ask me how Jahangir or Jansher would do today. If you’ve got the qualities of being a top player, you’d translate that to any era.”
In a sense, Marshall’s own story - illness, comebacks, technique that defied convention - is testament to that same idea. Talent is timeless. Mentality is timeless. Genius is timeless.
As Marshall puts it: “My strength was being deceptive. But against him? It wasn’t a weapon.”
