The Gazelle and the Warrior Princess

The CIB Black Ball Open 2020 will be remembered as the tournament Hania El Hammamy confirmed her place at the top table of the women’s game. Handed a tough draw, the young Egyptian met third seed Camille Serme in Round 3, before beating two more top 10 seeds on her way to the final. After 70 minutes of electrifying squash, El Hammamy had fought her way past Warrior Princess Nour El Sherbini to emerge from her first Platinum tier final with her first Platinum tier trophy. In this piece, Cross Court takes a look at the stats behind her victory, reviewing a range of metrics which show how El Hammamy benefitted from making this a high-paced encounter.

A volley of winners

To maximise her chance of success, El Hammamy – known as the Gazelle for her pace across court – would need to make this a high tempo affair. One tactic to ensure a quick game is to volley wherever possible, reducing the time available for your opponent to recapture the T. As expected, El Hammamy’s need for speed is reflected in the players’ volleying rates across the match: over the encounter, El Hammamy hit 137 volleys (25.8% of shots) compared with El Sherbini’s 115 (22.2%).

But when you volley is often as critical as how often. Throughout the encounter, El Hammamy hit a winning volley on 16 occasions, almost three times higher than El Sherbini (6). Adjusted for total winners hit, El Hammamy hit 44.4% of her winners with a volley, compared with El Sherbini’s 27.3%. As illustrated in the images below, a typical El Hammamy winner routine was to force El Sherbini wide, before demonstrating quick feet and impressive reach to volley the return.

El Hammamy forces El Sherbini off the T, and is quick enough to volley the return

Early intercepts

Another tactic to maintain a high tempo is to hit the ball early, once again reducing the time between shots. In this regard, it is a metric linked closely with volley rate. A good measure of early hitting is a player’s mid-court intercepts: hitting from this region is often indicative of a player intercepting an opponent’s attempted deep shot.

Throughout the match, El Hammamy hit 30.5% of shots from mid-court. El Sherbini, on the other hand, hit only 25.3% of her shots from this region. The discrepancy may appear small, but over 1049 shots (match total), five percentage points can make all the difference.

Hitting from mid-court is not purely beneficial to players looking to increase the tempo – any player hitting from this region benefits from the ability to hit the ball aggressively into all four corners and reduce the time and energy it takes to return to the T. Further evidence that mid-court intercepts are a good predictor of match success come from El Sherbini’s figures. Despite hitting one in four shots from mid-court across the match, this figure rises to 29.1% on those points that she won – that is, in line with El Hammamy’s numbers.

Shots off the back wall

If mid-court intercepts are indicative of a player increasing the tempo, shots taken off the back wall – allowing more recovery time between shots – often reflect a desire for a slower game. This metric echoes the mid-court narrative: while El Hammamy tried where possible to take the ball early, El Sherbini preferred to take pace out of the game. In all five games, El Hammamy hit fewer shots on the rebound than El Sherbini. Across the match, the Warrior Princess hit one in three of her groundstrokes off the back wall, while the Gazelle was determined not to let the tempo dip, hitting just one in five groundstrokes in this way.

The set-up and kill

The final metric highlighting the players’ differing styles and El Hammamy’s desire for a high-tempo encounter is illustrated by the player’s positions on court in the run up to a winning shot. El Hammamy hit half of all her winners from mid-court positions. El Sherbini, on the other hand, hit just 13.0% of her winners from this region. Similarly, the Gazelle hit 38.2% of her pre-winners – those shots hit one prior to a winner – from the mid-court region, almost twice as many as El Sherbini’s 20.0%. These figures further underscore how El Hammamy’s success derived from her domination of the mid-court.

El Sherbini’s approach was somewhat different. As a player with supreme strength from the back and guile from the front, her winners and pre-winners instead stemmed from these areas of the court. 65.0% of El Sherbini’s winners were set up by a pre-winner from the back (El Hammamy 38.2%), with three out of every five of her winners from the front of the court (El Hammamy one in three) – and a whopping 43.5% of her winners from the front left quadrant alone. El Hammamy knew she had no margin for error when leaving the ball short.

Gently does it

Given El Sherbini’s strength from the back, El Hammamy was careful not to let the match become a battle of power. A tactic often employed to frustrate an opponent’s power hitting is to take pace off the ball, with lobs from the front and slow drives from the back. Across the match, El Hammamy hit 22.4% of shots slowly; El Sherbini, by contrast, only took the pace off on 13.5% of shots. This pattern was replicated in four of the five games.

A Game 2 to remember and forget

El Hammamy will rightly look back at this match with pride. But upon rewatching, she might prefer to look away when the score hits 9-7 in the second: in her next 10 shots, the young Egyptian hit 4 errors, handing parity to the Warrior Princess at one game all. Nerves? Possibly. Inexperience? Certainly. Four time World Champion El Sherbini, by contrast, sought to disrupt an El Hammamy hot streak just two points previously by asking for a court-service for a few beads of sweat.

TO BE HITTING THESE METRICS - TO BE PLAYING SO DOMINANTLY - AND NOT TO TAKE THE GAME WAS CRIMINAL

But what will make this second game capitulation all the more harrowing for El Hammamy was that her performance in this game was astronomically high. She hit 39.2% of shots from the mid-court region (El Sherbini 23.7%); she forced El Sherbini to retrieve from deep 63.2% of the time, but only did so herself on 55.7% of shots. She hit 31.6% of her shots as volleys, twice the number of El Sherbini (14.5%). She hit just one in seven shots from off the back wall, but made El Sherbini retrieve on the rebound every third stroke. To be hitting these metrics – to be playing so dominantly – and not to take the game was criminal. At the highest level, even the most impressive performances can be undermined by the smallest lapse in concentration.

A mature head on young shoulders

If the second game collapse phased her, El Hammamy certainly didn’t seem to show it. With El Sherbini leading 9-4 in the fifth, commentator Jenny Duncalf was readying her ceremony notes in praise of the World Champion on her return from injury. But the Gazelle hadn’t read the script, stringing together a run of points to claim the final game 13-11. The best strikers forget the open goal miss and slot home the next pull-back; the most successful swing bowlers ignore the cover drive for four and take the edge with the same delivery next time around. Errors might have undone her good work at the end of the second game, but in these business end points of the final game El Hammamy made not a single error.

More impressive yet was El Hammamy’s clarity of thought under pressure. Throughout the match, she hit winner after winner with a cross court drop, illustrated in the still below.

At 9-8 in the fifth, a similar opportunity presented itself. But instead of replicating the tactic that had brought her success thus far, El Hammamy had the presence of mind to change it up. Opting against the cross court drop, she hit a drive winner down the line to square the game at 9-9, just the fourth time in 103 points that she had hit the ball past El Sherbini for a winner.

El Sherbini’s body angle is set up to retrieve the cross court drop, but El Hammamy switched it up to fire it behind her

In putting the second game meltdown to one side, and in trusting her ability to use a shot she’d hardly unveiled all match, El Hammamy displayed levels of maturity well above her 19 years of age. 3-2, 13-11 in the fifth. The crowning moment in the tournament that Hania El Hammamy confirmed her place at squash’s top table. All the signs point to her dining there for many years to come.