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31/08/2015
David Deposed

Squash Legend Nicol David Deposed as No.1

No player in the professional era of squash, man or women, has dominated the world’s ranking, as has the Malaysian Nicol David. That domination is expected to end on 1st September when David’s position will be usurped by the Egyptian Raneem El Welily.

The final decision thought will be in doubt until the rankings are officially published but initial calculations give the edge to the Egyptian by a peculiarity of the ranking system that many will seem as a technicality.

David has been world no.1 for over nine years and now at the age of 32 she will be required to reconfirm her commitment to win back the top slot or continue a gradual slide in the rankings.

El Welily has won three events over the last 12 months and came runner-up three times. David has won four events. How close the players are was highlighted in the 2014 Wadi Degla Women's World Squash Championship in Cairo when David saved four match-balls in the final to overcome the home favourite El Welily.

Both players have entered the next major event on the Women’s PSA Tour, the Stars on the Bund, China Open with David seeded no.1 and El Welily no.2. The rivalry continues.

If David is in fact demoted the ranking system can be expected to be subjected to serious scrutiny for there is bound to be questioning of it’s validity.


The technical issues
The rankings are, published on the 1st of the month are calculated by totalling the players points earned over the previous 12 months and averaging these. The PSA which has recently merged both the men’s and women’s associations has not yet aligned the ranking systems. The men’s system selects players top scoring events (for example the top 10 of 13, allowing low scoring events or nil scores due to injury to be dropped off). On the qualifying events this provides a true arithmetic average.

In the women’s ranking calculation the total points are divided by a ‘Divisor’ (presumably to encourage a player to play more tournaments). For eight events the total points are divided by eight but for nine events the nine event total is still divided by eight giving the player effectively a one ninth advantage. This has technically been David’s downfall.

She has two events that drop off her points total from August 2014 (the Malaysian and Hong Kong Opens) leaving her with the minimum eight events in her total giving her a total of 22,825 points; a mathematical average of 2,853.125 and a ranking average of 2,853.125.

El Welily dropped off just one event the Malaysian Open, which she won in 2014, giving her a total of 23,830 points, a mathematical average of 2,647.777 for her nine events but when divided by the ‘Divisor’ of eight, a ranking average of 2,978.75. She is therefore the new world no.1.

El Welily has won three events over the last 12 months and came runner-up three times. David won four events. How close the players are was highlighted in the 2014 Wadi Degla Women's World Squash Championship in Cairo when David saved four match-balls in the final to overcome the home favourite El Welily.

PSA Rankings:

Click here for How the ranking are made ...