When the squash player Hashim Khan died earlier this week, obituaries ran in dozens of newspapers around the world. Twitter lit up with photos and quotations. Websites and blogs mourned his passing. He was a legend. Part of his fame came from the sheer improbability of his journey from obscurity to being the greatest and most well-known practitioner of a popular game (15 million people worldwide, spread across almost every nation, play squash regularly).