Lucy Turmel: England international hopeful of World Team squash success

Lucy Turmel is now coached by former Ireland player Arthur Gaskin, who is based in the USA

Lucy Turmel is hopeful of further success with England's women at the squash World Team Championships in Egypt next month.

Sarah-Jane Perry, Georgina Kennedy, Jasmine Hutton and 23-year-old Turmel won the European team title in May.

But they will be third seeds in Cairo, where the World Championships take place from 10-16 December.

"We have a great relationship. It's going be an exciting week," Ipswich-born Turmel told BBC Radio Suffolk.

"Egypt and America are seeded above us, and I'd say rightly so. However, if all of us girls perform we are capable of achieving anything.

"It's going to be a lot to do with how we approach the week and if we believe, and every one of us plays well, you never know what can happen."

England's women won the most recent of their seven World Team titles in 2014, finishing as runners-up to Egypt in the last two competitions.

This year's event is the first since 2018, with the 2020 Championships in Kuala Lumpur cancelled because of Covid.

And although Kennedy, Hutton and Turmel will all be making their World Team debuts, the former also won Commonwealth Games gold in Birmingham earlier this year, while Perry took the bronze.

Turmel was beaten in four games in the quarter-finals by New Zealand's Joelle King, but reached the world top 20 at the end of last season and won the Boston Open in the USA in January.

"That was a milestone I set myself. I had three or four good tournaments in a row and that's what it takes to push up the rankings. You have to back up performances, you can't just have one win or you're not going to move up," she said.

"The ranking I'm at now, I'm playing all of the platinum events - those are the biggest events that you can play. Boston was a smaller event, but sometimes it's nice to go to a smaller one, get through some rounds and remember what it feels like to win.

"There were a lot of good players in the draw at Boston but I played great that week. It was a memorable one."

Turmel is currently ranked 29 but has "big aspirations" moving forwards.

"Everything's not all sunshine and rainbows, but when there's a bad part, it makes the good parts even better," she added.

"I want to reach the highest ranking again. I reached 20, but I want to go beyond that."