That's the confident prediction of every squash aficionado studying the modern men's game. Wave after wave of young Egyptians are dominating the junior tournament scene and rapidly graduating to fill the upper echelons of the professional rankings.

The all-conquering Amr Shabana is closely followed by wonder boy Ramy Ashour. But, hang on. There are plenty more wonder boys to follow.

Skip past Karim Darwish at eight, Wael El Hindi at nine and Mohammed Abbas (he's slipped from 13 to 20 in the latest PSA list), and you will find a long queue of fellow Egyptians marching up the rankings, intent on joining them there.

I received an unintentional close-up view of one of them in the recent ISS Canary Wharf Squash Classic. While Tournament Director Tim Garner was busy overseeing the construction of the Eventis glass court at our fabulous East Wintergarden venue, I was holding the fort in the tournament office at Wimbledon Rackets and Fitness club during the qualifying competition.

We were a referee short for one of our matches, featuring the talented Indian Saurav Ghosal against the precociously talented Egytpian teenager Mohammed El Shorbagy, so I reluctantly stepped into the breach.

The players I had asked to do the job all mysteriously vanished at the appointed time, some mumbling about train journeys and others ruling themselves out of the job by expressing relationships or favouritism with or for one of the protagonists. Others were more up-front. They were expecting fireworks on court and would rather not tackle the job in hand.

They were not wrong. Shorbagy is an imposing physical specimen. Just 17, he has the broad shoulders you would expect from a former swimmer. He also possesses a phenomenal squash brain, unleashing an astonishing array of attacking shots at will. Ghosal, one of the fastest players on the tour, is one of the best retrievers in the game, and so we were set for a mini-classic. I love qualifying tournaments. They always throw up momentous battles among the rising stars, the journeymen and those just a fraction away from greatness who can't quite find the missing piece in the squash jigsaw.

This was one to savour. Ghosal's greater experience and superb court coverage should have made him the favourite (plus a 30-place difference in their respective world rankings). But Shorbagy seemed unconcerned by such trivialities.

He won a tremendous battle 7-11, 11-7, 11-8, 14-12, holding his nerve in a tense tiebreak to book a place in the first round against the wily Welshman Alex Gough, a PSA Tour veteran 20 years his senior.

Against Ghosal, Shorbagy started nervously and surrendered the first six points of the match as the Indian totally dominated the opening exchanges. Shorbagy made a fight of it but Ghosal was able to protect his lead to comfortably win the opening game. But Shorbagy came out for the second fully pumped up and firing in winners at will. He powered through the next two games and seemed poised for a comfortable victory when he led 9-5 in the fourth before big match nerves took hold once again.

Ghosal produced a succession of winners to take the game to a tiebreak before Shorbagy, twisting, turning and lunging desperately after every ball, finally scrambled home.

As a referee, I was relieved it was over. The match had everything: outstanding shot-making, total commitment from both players, squash played at a phenomenal; pace, and more than few errors from both players.

Afterwards several spectators came up and said they had agreed with every decision I had made. I was not so sure. I had called No-let to Ghosal three times as he ran into his opponent instead of going for the ball, and felt totally justified in those. But there was one that niggled at the back of my mind. It was when Shorbagy shaped up to play a straightforward backhand drive around the left-hand service box and suddenly spun round to play the ball on his forehand. The crowd gasped in disbelief at his audacity and the young Egyptian waved an exaggerated racket swing in the direction of Ghosal, who was stationed on the T.

I awarded a let, firmly believing in my split-second rationale that Shorbagy had forfeited a direct path to the ball and created his own interference by changing from backhand to forehand.

It was interesting to note that the following day he repeated the trick against Gough and was awarded a stroke, although the ball was nearer the mid-court zone and Gough ended up being ensnared by the teenager's Ross Norman-like backswing.

The Egyptian teenager is a student at the renowned Millfield College and he often trains with Joey Barrington, both at Millfield and Wimbledon. Fascinatingly, Barrington tried the same trick the next day during his exceptional victory against Olli Tuominen of Finland.

After the match I asked Joey if he had taught Shorbagy the shot or learned it from the young maestro himself. It was light-hearted courtside banter, but Joey conceded that it was Shorbagy who had trademarked the shot.

The youngster had looked like a rabbit trapped in the headlights as he began his match against Gough, in very different surroundings and conditions as he opened the  proceedings on the glass court in his first appearance in a major tournament.

He fumbled and stumbled as he tried to get adjusted to the glass court, the bright lights and the giant screen above the front wall magnifying every naive error in glorious Technicolor.

Gough cruised through the oepning two games with almost embarrassing ease but suddenly Shorbagy woke up, remembering the words of wisdom imparted to him earlier in the day by Jonah Barrington, his mentor and master at Millfield School.

"He told me this was an adult tournament and not to play like a junior," admitted Shorbagy after an astonishing fight back. It was anything but junior squash as he finally became accustomed to his surroundings and began to take the game to Gough.

The packed and knowledgeable London crowd really got behind him as he fearlessly attacked all corners of the court. The schoolboy suddenly looked like a man as he reeled off two games to make the match level at two-all.

Gough reasserted his authority to clinch a hard-won victory in the fifth, but he had seen enough to confidently predict that Shorbagy would one day succeed  Shabana as world champion.

Amazingly, many experts are predicting the same outcome for a prodigiously talented 11-year-old back home in Cairo as the Egyptian production line shows no sign of slowing down.

So, the big question is: What is the secret of the Egyptian system?

Former world No.2 Peter Marshall provided an astonishing answer.

"There is no system," he said. "That's the beauty of it."

So, there we have it. In essence, what Marshall paraphrased was a scenario in which every Egyptian squash club is filled with hundreds of enthusiastic, ambitious and talented youngsters who are able to watch the world's leading stars at close quarters.

They have plenty of experienced coaches on hand to train with and the sheer weight of numbers raises the bar in all competitions. The best kids are fast-tracked to the national squads where the competition is phenomenal.

Compare that to the situation in many parts of England, where any 12-year-old child who can hold a squash racket is instantly selected for their local county squad.

Many squash scholars have observed that the big difference between the two nations is that the Egyptians place the learning of racket skills way ahead of physical development. It certainly seems to be working. There is plenty of time for gym work when their young bodies are strong enough to cope with the strain.

I believe there is a fundamental lesson here for all those countries with massive government funding for national sports academies and rigorously structured age-group competitions.

Chuck the fitness manual out of the window and teach the kids a million ways to hit a squash ball. Just like the Egyptians.

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