BRITISH squash champion Daryl Selby says he wants to prove last year wasn't a fluke by retaining his national crown.

Selby caused a shock when he beat world number one Nick Matthew at the British National Championships in Manchester last year, but next week he will have to work even harder to keep the title.

For it is the first time in the competition's history that the world's number one and number two, in James Willstrop, will be battling it out. It will also be the first time the defending champion is not placed in the world's top two.

Matthew has just regained the number one spot from Willstrop and Shenfield's Selby is hoping that with the pair concentrating on each other, he can sneak up unnoticed to triumph.

"There's no reason why I can't win it again," the 28-year-old told the Gazette. "I'll just have to beat the two highest ranked players in the world. If I do that then it'll probably be my biggest achievement to date.

"It would mean more than last year purely because of that.

"People within the game know that on my day I'm capable of beating anyone and it would be nice just to prove that last year was not some freak result.

"James and Nick will be hungry to be British champion and will see each other as the competition so hopefully I can sneak up on them."

Selby will warm up for the competition by heading to the Swedish Open today (Wednesday) which will finish on Sunday, before jetting back for the nationals which run from next Tuesday until Sunday, February 12.

He will go in to the tournament bang in form having made his first world series semi-final at the recent Tournament of Champions, held in New York's Grand Central Station.

Selby lost to his nemesis Willstrop, who he has never beaten, 11-2, 11-3, 11-2, but was carrying a foot injury he'd sustained in the 3-0 quarter-final victory over Egyptian Mohamed El Shorbagy.

"I had problem with my foot and that made it go from being really exciting and really good to a really disappointing ending," Selby explained. "I lost to the then world number one so I suppose it's not that big a deal.

"I pushed him quite hard but I had a random injury from taping my foot from the quarter-final. The tape started rubbing the inside of my foot and it took two layers of skin off.

"I played through it but it couldn't heal in two days and it was too painful.

"The semi-finals were numbers one, two, three in the world and me. I just need to do that more often. That bit of consistency just eludes me sometimes, but when I play right I'm someone to be feared."

Selby revealed he was delighted to get revenge on El Shorbagy who knocked him out of the World Squash Open in Rotterdam in November.

After the defeat he was critical of the Egyptian's respect and sense of fair play, telling social networking website Twitter: 'My opponent needs to learn some respect. I have no respect now for him, I don't like him & next time I'm gonna (sic) smash him'.

"It was nice to get revenge on him," he said. "I had a little word with him beforehand and said we should put our differences aside and try and have a good game of squash.

"He took that on board and there were no issues whatsoever."