PROSQUASH
Vol 13 No. 3 Issue No. 51 July 2009
Chief Patron: Harshvardhan Patil (Minister, Govt of Maharashtra) // Founder Director: Mahendra Agarwal // Directors : Narendra Gour (I.R.S.) Navneet Soni (I.R.S.) // Executive Directors: Anil Diggikar (I.A.S), Bharat Bhushan (I.R.S)// Honored Patrons: Vivek Nair (VC & M.D.The Leela), Sajjan Jindal (Chairman & M.D.  JSW Steel Ltd), Eric  Dastur (Chairman, K.M. Dastur Reinsurance Brokers Pvt. Ltd.) // President: Ashish Gupta // Vice President: Noreena // Secretary General: Sanjay Goyal // Joint Secretary: Vicky Kalludi // Treasurer: Ashok Nagpal // Executive Committee Mem.: Saifee Jani, Rakesh Lakhanpal, Madhukar Musle, Organising Secretary: Karan Mehra, Ajit Singh, Imroze Pathan, Karanjeet Singh // Advisor: Pradeep K. Vijayakar // Chief Executive: Vidhya Rao // Technical Director: Amitoj Inder Singh // Chief Co-ordinator: Riaz Mohammed
      
 

“PROSQUASH” TURNS FIFTY

  

By: Khalid A-H Ansari


The 50th edition of the PROSQUASH, the News Magazine of Indian Squash Professionals was released at BMC Headquarters by Mr. Anil Diggikar (Additional Commissioner of BMC, Projects) along with Noreena (VP, ISP), Mahesh Mangaonkar (British Junior Champion), Anjali Managaonkar (Mahesh Mangaonkar's mother) & Mahendra Agarwal (Founder Director, ISP)

     

If you apply the expression “give till it hurts”, that is popular with charity organisations, to Mahendra Agarwal's contribution to Indian squash over the past 16 years, you will have to conclude that the self-effacing Kerry Packer of Indian squash has a superhuman threshold of pain. 

It would be no exaggeration for me to say that in all my 40 years' association with Indian sport in different capacities at various levels all over our country, I have not come across a sports patron and organiser as visionary, large-hearted, selfless and devoted as Mahendra. 

He is the fulcrum that gives the Indian Squash Professionals (ISP), as also the Squash Racquets Association (SRAM), of which I am privileged to be Chairman Emeritus, balance and power. 

If the game of squash has reached its present level of popularity in terms of number of players, courts, tournaments, coaching facilities and prize money (not to mention the magnet-like 

attraction that draws to it students aspiring to go abroad on squash scholarships), a great deal of credit must deservedly go to largely to Mahendra Agarwal, his band of dedicated workers in ISP and his colleagues in the SRAM. 

Having started PROSQUASH, his expensive hobby, under the guidance of the late Raju Chainani, the trail-blazing squash correspondent of the Times of India and Sportsweek (his contribution in popularising the game of squash in Maharashtra was immeasurable) and Pradeep Vijayakar, the Times all-round Sports Journalist. Mahendra has taken the game to never-dreamt-of heights nation-wide through his unique publication. 

Although Mumbai-based, the coverage of PROSQUASH is nation-wide; its reach and influence among players, coaches and administrators, as also in the corridors of power in New Delhi, considerable. 

Those of us in the business of newspaper and magazine publishing know only too well what it takes in terms of blood, tears, toil and sweat to regularly bring out any publication of consistent quality. 

For Mahendra to have published 50 issues of PROSQUASH, a journal of record for posterity, which zealously spreads the gospel of squash to more than 3000 members of the burgeoning fraternity at his own expense and no cost to squash lovers in India and abroad with impressive regularity, is remarkable by any yardstick.
     
 

[ 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 ]