Anahat Singh is India’s teenage squash player who is making headlines in the ongoing Commonwealth Games 2022.
The 14-year-old rose to prominence after winning the girls U-11 title at the British Junior Open Squash in January 2019 followed by the girls U-13 title at the Dutch Junior Open Squash in the same year.
In June 2022, Anahat won the girls U-15 title of the Asian Junior Squash Individual Championships. She is the top-ranked player in Asia in the girls U-15 category as of June 2022. She was also a part of the 2021–22 PSA World Tour, by reaching the quarterfinals of the Indian Tour in Noida held in 2021.
Impressive start
A fan of India’s star shuttler PV Sindhu, Anahat is the youngest in the 200-plus Indian contingent in Birmingham. She got off to an impressive start in the women’s singles squash competition with a win over Jada Ross of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Hailing from a family of sportspersons with parents being former hockey players, Anahat took up badminton when she was six years old. Her older sister Amira played squash then.
At the age of eight, Anahat swapped badminton for squash.
Change in sport
“I used to go along my sister and hit for like 15-20 minutes but nothing serious because I was mainly pursuing badminton...my sister was playing a tournament in Bengal and I went along so I entered as well,” Anahat was quoted as saying to ESPN.
“But then I started actually doing well, I started practising a lot more.”
Anahat is keen to follow the likes of Joshna Chinappa, her teammate in CWG 2022, and make a career in squash.
“Badminton is a really popular sport I could have taken that up easily... but squash is something I enjoy a lot more. I need to do the thing I have the most fun with instead of something more popular,” added Anahat, who loves to paint and play piano in her free time.
Anahat aced national selection trials to break into the Indian squad for Birmingham.
So far, Anahat has won 46 national circuit titles, 2 national championships and 9 international titles. She is the only Indian girl to win the US Junior Open in any category and the British Junior Open.
