There’s a sport that has been played in the shadows of cricket, football and badminton for decades in India — quietly producing world-class athletes, quietly building a following, and quietly waiting for its moment. In March 2026, that moment gets a little louder. The JSW Indian Open, scheduled from March 18 to 22 at Mumbai’s iconic CCI-Brabourne Stadium, is the second edition of a tournament that already made history when it launched just a year ago.
To understand why this matters, a little context helps. Major international squash had been absent from India for nearly seven years, the last significant tournament being the CCI International in 2018, before JSW Sports brought it back with the Indian Open in 2025. Seven years is a long time to keep a sport’s ambitions on ice. When the tournament returned, it did so with intent.
The 2025 edition was India’s first-ever PSA Squash Copper event — the Professional Squash Association’s tier for elite international competition — held at the Bombay Gymkhana, with a prize purse of $40,000 and players flying in from Egypt, Canada, Malaysia, Japan, and several other nations. But what made the tournament genuinely cinematic was where the key matches were played. From the quarterfinals onwards, matches moved outdoors onto a full-glass court built on the lawns of the Bombay Gymkhana — creating a spectacle unlike anything Indian squash had offered before. Imagine watching athletes sprint, lunge, and smash in a transparent box under open skies. It was theatre dressed as sport.
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And the star of that theatre? A 17-year-old from Delhi named Anahat Singh. Already earmarked for excellence at 14 when she became the youngest member of India’s contingent at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Anahat arrived at the 2025 Indian Open as the newly-minted India No. 1, and she did not disappoint. Supported by JSW Sports, she claimed her sixth title on the bounce, dispatching Hong Kong’s Helen Tang in just 24 minutes on the outdoor glass court. The crowd watching a teenager dismantle her opponent with calm, clinical efficiency had a new hero to cheer.
What makes Anahat’s story so compelling for a non-squash audience is how effortlessly it transcends the sport. She is a natural athlete with intrinsic agility and a fluidity of strokes, but it is her composure that sets her apart — genuine enthusiasm to battle it out, even at 17, on the highest stages available. In a post-match interview after her Mumbai win, when asked about pressure, she spoke not of the match but of the Italy vacation her mother had promised if she won. That kind of easy confidence tends to build champions.
The men’s title that evening went to Egypt’s Kareem El Torkey, who edged out India’s Abhay Singh in a tense four-game final. The 20-year-old from Cairo, who had earlier defeated compatriot Omar Mosaad in the semifinals, displayed accuracy and agility to deny Abhay a fairytale home win before a packed crowd.
For 2026, the tournament shifts to CCI-Brabourne Stadium — a venue that carries enormous weight in Indian sporting history. Built on land reclaimed from the Arabian Sea and inaugurated in 1937, Brabourne Stadium hosted the Pentangular cricket tournament, India’s first Test match against the West Indies, and has remained one of the country’s most storied sporting venues. Taking squash to those grounds, even for five days in March, is a statement of seriousness.
The larger ambition is clear — JSW Sports and the Squash Rackets Federation of India have signed a multi-year agreement to bring three more international tournaments to Indian soil, across Mumbai, New Delhi, and Chennai, with the stated goal of preparing Indian players for squash’s Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Six Indian players currently rank in the world’s top 100, and with a proper pipeline of home tournaments and international coaching, that number is expected to grow.
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For a country that runs on cricket, it’s easy to overlook what is quietly being built in the squash courts. The JSW Indian Open is not just a sports tournament. It’s the beginning of a long-overdue reckoning with a sport that India has the talent, the infrastructure, and now the institutional will to dominate.
