In this 33 minute video published on the 19th November this year, the England Squash CEO Keir Worth and the Director Participation, Mark Williams, explain the thinking behind the re-branding of England Squash & Racketball as England Squash. One issue the rebranding is hoping to address is the decline in popularity of squash but this ignores the fact that racketball is showing growth. If the 2 figures have been aggregated and overall still shows decline then squash is in a worse position than they think. And dropping the branch of the sport that is growing seems daft.  It seems clear that they aren’t particularly interested in racketball. They have based the decision on a consultation with squash players. There is no mention of consulting racketball players. They see the separate squash and racketball as divisive and in any case, according to them, no one knows what racketball is! So they want us all to be one squash community. Racketball will continue but renamed and as a form of squash. But surely this is how we see racketball already?

One week later ES published another video on how the recent rebrand will help to inspire new players and reinvigorate current participants. According to this ‘racketball’ as a name will cease to exist and will become part of the squash community. It is now, apparently, seen as a separate and divisive sport. Racketball will continue but it will be renamed. It will be interesting to see what they come up with. At the time in the 1990s when the then Squash Rackets Association took over the younger British Racketball Association there was some discussion about renaming racketball. The main contenders seemed to be ‘big ball squash’ and ‘short squash’. Perhaps tongue in cheek another suggestion was ‘squabble’!

Any thoughts on this?