“I’m quite unconventional,” said squash player John Sumner when asked about his style of play.

“I’m a lobber and a dropper. Usually people go on a squash court and hammer 12 bells out of the ball but I try to move people around.”

Unconventional Sumner may be, but it’s a style of play that has stood him in very good stead for the best part of 43 years.

Now not far short of 54, he first started playing the game when he was 11 and for the past five years he has been captain of Cotswold Squash Club, a club he joined some 12 years ago when he moved to this part of the world.

The club are based at Cotswold Leisure Centre in Cirencester and they have two teams in the Gloucestershire League, the flagship team in Premier B and and a second team in Division One.

“It’s a great sport,” said Sumner. “It’s fast-paced, it keeps you fit. It’s a good social  sport too.”

Sumner started playing squash in the late 70s at a time when Jonah Barrington was a household name in the sport.

“There was a real vibrancy back then,” continued Sumner. “There were glass-back viewing galleries, the sport was being played on the back of Jonah Barrington.

“He was British Open champion which was the Wimbledon of squash.”

Sumner is originally from Plymouth and it’s fair to say he took to the sport straight away.

“I remember my first ever tournament,” he said. “I won a couple of matches and in the third round I played Del Harris who went on to become one of the top players in the world.

“He had a coach and was doing press-ups and warm-ups before the game; I didn’t have a coach, I was just looking around!”

Sumner lost the match but performed very well, so well in fact that on the back of that match he got called into the Great Britain under-12 squad.

That saw him train up in Shropshire which was a fair old trip for someone his age in those days.

He admits he wasn’t aggressive enough as a player when he was with the GB squad but still looks back on that time with fondness.

“Peter Marshall was in the under-10s,” he recalled, “he went on to become world number one.

“He played double-handed because he wasn’t strong enough back then and he played double-handed professionally, the only player to do so.”

Sumner, a chartered surveyor, clearly enjoys everything that goes with squash, but he was a decent all-round sportsman growing up.

He played both football and rugby and was captain of Plymouth Schoolboys under-12s in football, adding with a laugh: “Everything went downhill after I was 12.”

He also played bass guitar in a number of bands, something he very much enjoyed, but as far as his sport goes it’s squash that is still calling the tune and he certainly has no plans to retire any time soon.

“There are people in the Gloucestershire League over the age of 70 still playing at a very good level,” said dad-of-two Sumner, who is married to Sam.

“The people who started playing in the 70s and 80s, it’s a sport that is ingrained into them. I want to keep playing for as long as I can.

“We all got the buzz back then and we’ve still got it.”