Birmingham — It started with a cross-court volley kill from Nouran Gohar and ended with a stinging forehand drive by Nour El Sherbini. In between, these two Egyptians served up one of the best quality finals. The scoreline didn’t tell the story. El Sherbini deservedly won it 11-9, 11-7, 11-1, but this British Open women’s finale was a close run affair before El Sherbini sprinted to a wonderful fourth title success. 

Having become the first Egyptian to win the women’s title back in 2016, the player with a quiet voice is an all-powerful 27-year-old continuing to make noises as a true great of the game.

Greg Gaultier, a coach of El Sherbini in attendance in Birmingham, called his charge’s performance “a masterclass”. And this was just that, a world away from her perilous journey to the final. After her 42-minute on Sunday, El Sherbini admitted that she could have crashed out in the first round (by Japan’s Satomi Watanabe), before surviving five-games in her last two matches. 

Gaultier is by instinct a competitor, even if he is now watching on from close confines. He couldn’t hide his smile as he told Squash Mad that when it matters, a champion emerges. Gohar, the world No.1 for over a year, has now lost the last three finals.

Yet, she was perhaps a favourite coming into Sunday’s showdown. She hadn’t lost a game and was a cut above all who came into her choppy path. Little matter for El Sherbini in this battle of the top two seeds; the threat early on was coming from her volley. 

She lapped up anything loose and mid court from Gohar. It was still level pegging at 6-6 but El Sherbini stole a march with a front wall drop, complete with a double fist pump towards the sell-out crowd, followed by a backhand volley cut into the nick.

This was high quality, indeed. In the second, El Sherbini was trading equally to Gohar with a double dose of backhand and cross-court kills. Gohar, playing her fourth British final in a row, was also looking more frequently in the direction of her coach, Rodney Martin, chewing his gum ever more rapidly.

The Sunday matinee final was serving up a considerable dose of tension, too. At 5-5 you may have been able to hear trains departing New Street. Four points later, Gohar left El Sherbini scampering to the back wall where she turned on her left ankle. 

A three-minute injury time out was granted, yet it hardly affected El Sherbini as she returned and won the next four points, which included a telling forehand kill. The Egyptian now sensed a third British final win over her chief rival and it arrived in minutes before an embrace from Gaultier.

“Squash is a really fun sport watching it from TV. Great athletes out there,” El Sherbini wrote a year ago as she was forced out of the British Open with injury. A year on, she said: “I was almost out from the first round but the best things came at the end.”

In this frenetic ending to the season, Gohar cut through the initial disappointment as she focuses on next month’s World Championships. “There’s no time to be sad, it’s back to work and back to business,” she said.