Sindh Government launch five-month football course

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

Football remains one of the most popular sports of Pakistan despite the lack of infrastructure and poor administration. The passion for the game has not died down and the following, contrary to the popular belief, is understood to be on the rise with the new generation into it.

It’s very heartening to find the Sports and Youth Affairs department of the Government of Sindh having taken the initiative to launch a five-month long football course under the banner of Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Youth Development Programme (BBSYDP). The course was launched at the PSB Coaching Centre in Karachi on June 9.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui, Secretary Sports and Youth Affairs to the Government of Sindh, observed that the provincial government was trying their best to promote sports in the nook and corners of Sindh.

He pointed out that coaching played a vital role in preparing and developing the skills of the athletes and the standard of the game can not be strengthened at the grassroots level without the involvement of the coaches.

He revealed that the Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Qaim Ali Shah, has allocated Rs 13 million for this project under which the coaching courses are being organized in as many as three games.

The provincial government, as part of the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Youth Development Programme (BBSYDP), will be organizing coaching course hockey after having started the courses for the cricket and football coaches.

“Just as we have organized the training course for the cricket coaches with the support of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) the football and hockey coaching courses are being held with the collaboration of the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) and the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) respectively,” Shoaib Siddiqui said.

“A monthly stipend of Rs.6,000 is being given to the participants of the course belonging to Karachi while the outstation participants are paid Rs.9,000 per month,” he added.

“Here’s an opportunity for the coaches to fine tune their skills and become even better professionals to serve the cause of the game,” Shoaib Siddiqui reckoned.

Those attending the football course are Pervez Ahmed (Larkana), Ali Haider Jamali, Imdad Ali (Dadu), Shahid Ali Baloch, Imran Ali, Sheharyar (Mirpurkhas), Abdul Hafeez (Ghotki), Shah Khalid, Hafiz Asad Hussain, Syed Bukhtiar Ali Rizvi (Hyderabad), Haseeb Hasan, Muhammad Arsalan Sharif, Yasir Arafat, Noor Ali, Ali Ahmed and Azeem Sharif (Karachi).

The women participants attending the football course are Zehra Abbas, Afshan Fatima, Nuzhat Zehra and Ambreen Hameed, all of them hailing from Karachi.

The PFF Director, Youth and Grassroots Management, Siddique Shaikh, is supervising the course. He firmly believed that the five-month course will hugely benefit the participants who are getting the opportunity of learning about the basics of coaching besides learning the latest techniques of imparting training to the athletes.

The opening ceremony was also attended by Deputy Secretary Youth Affairs to Government of Sindh and Project Director, Saleem Ahmed Siddiqui, PSB Director Coaching Centre, Zulfiqar Abro, Event Coordinator Asif Azeem and ADO Mushtaq Ahmed

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Pakistan may not be able to hire foreign snooker coach immediately

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

The plans of the Pakistan Billiards & Snooker Federation (PBSA) to acquire the services of a foreign coach could be in jeopardy if the allocation for sports in the federal budget for the financial year 2010-11 was not revised.

Alamgir Anwar Shaikh, President, PBSA, has not minced words in describing the proposed cut in the budget as catastrophic for sports in the country.

“Obviously each and every federation affiliated to the Ministry of Sports will be affected and ours would be no exception. The curtailment of funds will spell disaster for sports in Pakistan and many of the plans in pipeline would be severely affected,” he noted.

“We had successfully negotiated a deal with Sanjay Sawant of India to coach our cueists after the Federal Ministry of Sports had agreed in principle to take care of the expenses. But in the prevailing scenario the chances of the Ministry meeting the commitment are very remote indeed,” Alamgir Shaikh reckoned.

“We had approached Sawant only after been given this understanding by the Ministry. We held negotiations with him during the recently concluded Asian Snooker Championship in Thailand. Sawant had agreed to coach our cueists according to the worked out timetable,” the PBSA President, who was to ink the deal upon the release of funds for this specific purpose by the Federal Sports Ministry, added.

The PBSA had planned to hire Sawant for a three-month coaching programme and he was to train the Pakistani cueists in three phases for the major international events to be held later this year and early next year.

Sawant was due to visit Pakistan, had the deal been signed, for the first time before the Asian Games before returning to conduct coaching sessions for the preparation of World Snooker Championship to be held in December.

Sawant’s proposed coaching stint was also to train the local cueists for the 1st Asian 6-Red Championship, the 12th Asian U-21 Snooker Championship and the 27th Asian Snooker Championship to be held early next year.

The PBSA had started eyeing a foreign coach to improve the skills of the local cueists in general and the youngsters in particular who were unable to come up with consistent performance at the top level.

With Mohammad Yousuf, the only Pakistani to have been crowned at the international and continental level, past his prime and Saleh Mohammad, who did possess the material to bring home a major title, having moved to neighbouring Afghanistan the PBSA has been left with no option but to groom the young guns to become world beaters.

To make matters worse the experienced hands like Khurram Hussain Agha and Naveen Kumar Perwani, who dominated the domestic circuit for quite a while, could not maintain the consistency to earn the much needed title for the country.

Mohammad Sajjad has emerged as the new shining light but he too fell at the last hurdle in the recently held Asian Snooker Championship in Thailand. Then there are promising youngsters like Asjad Iqbal and Mohammad Asif who also have the potential to make their presence felt. The coaching stints, as planned by the PBSA, could fast track the rise of these talented young cueists.

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Yuvraj gets wake-up call

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

The manner in which Yuvraj Singh was moving around in the ICC Twenty20 in the West Indies last month there should not be any debate about his exclusion from the Indian squad for the upcoming Asia Cup.

He didn’t appear fit mentally or physically during the course of the tournament and he was a mere shadow of his own former self. Gone was the spark in his fielding and also missing was his usual aggression with the bat. The man who used to be an asset for the side with his all-round versatility had become a liability.

Yuvraj, a master blaster in his own right, has been short of runs from his own high standards for the past many months. He has been laid low by fitness problems and the form has also deserted him in the limited appearances that he has been able to make in this the most turbulent phase of his career yet.

Known and feared for taking the attack to the opposition he used to be an automatic choice in the star-studded Indian batting line-up in the limited overs matches for the past one decade.

The Indian selection panel, led by the enterprising former opener Krishnamachari Srikkanth, appears to have made the right decision of having ignored him for the Asia Cup because Yuvraj didn’t deserve to make the cut in his present form and there was no point in picking him on mere reputation.

I think the Indian selectors have learnt their lessons quickly. They have realized sooner than later that drafting the left-hander in the ICC Twenty20 side was a blunder and that he should be sidelined at the moment.

Almost every batsman has had to endure a lean patch in a long career. Yuvraj now has to work hard to regain form and fitness to stage a comeback because the young guns like Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are standing right there to grab his place.

The 28-year-old Yuvraj does have the skill and time at his disposal to bounce back but the road to recovery may not be as easy as it looks like. He will be needed to prove his fitness and get runs at the domestic level before resuming international career.

He had an ordinary IPL earlier this year and he was even removed from captaincy of the Kings XI Punjab whom he had led pretty well in the earlier two editions of the tournament. There were just a few flashes of brilliance and his side sorely missed his aggression in the middle.

He’s reported to be having a dodgy shoulder and knee for quite sometime. In fact his knee has needed surgery which he has been putting off since 2006.

It goes to his credit that he has still played quite a few match-winning knocks for India despite being handicapped by injuries but they look like taking its toll with so much of cricket around. Consistency is what he lacked, however, and he has finally been given a wake-up call.

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Ron Fergie’s eternal affair with a game called cricket

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

One of the most fascinating aspects of cricket is the association of lovely characters with it. Unlike quite a few other sports, it’s not restricted to the athletes. There are many flavours of cricket and its so many characters immortalizing the sport.

The 85-year-old Ron Fergie, now living in Australia’s capital, Canberra, is one of the most adorable characters to be associated with the gentleman’s game. His fairy tale could be a source of motivation to many individuals. His example of courage and fortitude should inspire people.

He was unable to walk because of a disease in his hip joint from the age of seven to 10 but only a couple of years later he had captained his school cricket and football teams and he went on to play first grade cricket in Perth, Western Australia.

At the age of 25, after his left leg was severed early in the cricket season, he played out the same season wearing an artificial leg. In fact, reportedly, he kept playing and enjoying club cricket until he was 72!

Having missed key cricket years while serving overseas, he was dropped from North Perth’s strong first-grade side, which included five then current or past West Australian State players.

On November 5, 1949, in his next match in a second-grade game at Perth Oval, he had responded with a century and again dreamed of playing for Australia. He was in high spirits as he left the oval on his motor bike, but at the first intersection a drunk driver hit him at speed. Fergie landed in the middle of the floor of a shop 60 feet away from the impact, his leg so badly mangled that it was amputated that night.

Perth Oval was in sight from the hospital balcony and on the following Saturday, the second day of the match, his team lined up on the oval at afternoon tea time to wave to him, while he waved back with a bed sheet. Perhaps they were saluting a career cut off in its prime, but before that season was over, he was playing again!

The leg, however, did not heal properly and he had to undergo a second amputation at the end of that season. At first he played with a wooden leg, hinged from a thigh strap and hanging from an over-the-shoulder harness.

The artificial leg restricted him to fielding in slips at first, but he adapted well to wicket-keeping and batted with a runner. He was sufficiently agile that not much of the fast bowling got through him, even on one occasion when a very quick bowler did his block and sprayed 17 successive no-balls past the batsman.
The versatile character that he was, Fergie went on to play first grade, as an opening batsman and wicket-keeper, with several Canberra clubs and was still playing first grade into his 40s.

Because of several overseas assignments he was not able to play continuously. He lectured in economic statistics in Tokyo for two years in the 1970s, followed by four years as National Statistician for the newly-emerging nation of Papua New Guinea where he played in the same team as his son Bob.

He played two seasons in Wellington, New Zealand, and some social cricket in Japan and Jamaica. In Japan, women were posted around the boundary to toss the balls back.

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South Africa complete whitewash without being in total control

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

Well it’s quite incredible how the fortunes of the West Indies cricket have changed. The team that was known and feared for inflicting whitewash rather ‘blackwash’ to its opponents now finds itself at the receiving end.

In the days when Clive Lloyd and Vivian Richards were at the helm of the affairs, with the battery of fast bowlers doing the demolition act, it was rare to find teams being spared of a whitewash while confronting the West Indies.

But that era has now become history and Chris Gayle leads a team that cannot be expected to escape punishment when coming across the fancied outfits like Australia and South Africa. They may get away with it against the formidable Indians but they are extremely unlikely to come good against any other strong team.

To rub salt to the injury the West Indians have now been blanked in the five-match series of the One-day Internationals (ODIs) at home. Obviously the result would have bitterly disappointed the home fans but it wasn’t entirely surprising when judging by the body language of the combatants.

The South Africans were fortunate in the sense that they had to face an opposition devoid of spirit and the will power that used to be their forte in the past. It was more a case of the West Indies committing suicide rather than the South Africans playing extraordinary cricket to generate this kind of result.

Graeme Smith’s men, wounded by yet another early exit in an ICC event, managed to complete a clean sweep against the West Indies despite not having been in total control during the series. They scampered home by just one wicket in the fifth and final game in Trinidad after having shown the same kind of nerves that didn’t allow them to proceed beyond the Super Eights at the World Twenty20.

"It's terrific to have achieved this result, and bounce back from the failure at the Twenty20 World Cup. It was an important time for us as a group of people, and it was important for us to regain the faith of a lot of the public back home. I think a lot of the fans back home in South Africa support us through thick and thin, so it is nice to give them all something about which to feel good," Smith acknowledged.

"The last few games have been too close for comfort. We have chased on some pretty flat pitches, and West Indies have controlled the games at different times, and we have lost wickets at crucial times. But we have held our nerve. Winning is a habit, and when you get into tight games, and you are used to winning, you are able to limp over the line," he added.

"We seem to be in a bad habit of losing, and when it comes down to these tight situations in matches, we do not know how to handle ourselves. It's been tough losing this much. The good thing is we have a few days off to put this behind us, and hopefully, we can get a fresh start in the Test series," Gayle remarked rather in hope rather than expectation.

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Sportsmasala.com launch Tissot FIFA World Cup Predictor Game

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

The football fever has started gripping the world and sportsmasala.com, the pioneering sports portal in Pakistan, has recently launched a prediction game on FIFA World Cup Football Tournament 2010 which will run in tandem with the mega event.

The game, sponsored by Tissot, a renowned Swiss watch company, could be played on www.sportsmasala.com and the registration is free with prizes to the tune of Rs 200,000 on offer. The World Cup game is spread over two competitions with the first one asking for predictions of interesting statistics and the second one relates to the results of the matches and the performance of the participants.

It’s titled Tissot FIFA World Cup 2010 Predictor Game and can be played on www.sportsmasala.com. It is indeed a must visit site for all football fans who can follow the latest Cup news via a live RSS feed, keep up-to-date with group standings, interesting facts and above all win handsome prizes, including the stylish Tissot watches. The registration for the game is free and open to all with a valid email account being the sole requirement.

The launching ceremony of the event was held on May 29 in which Salahuddin, a cricket celebrity, was the guest of honour. On this occasion he distributed cash prizes among the winners of the Tissot EPL Predictor game on the same website, which was based on the 2009-2010 English Premier League season.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tissot Watches Pakistan, Pakistan, Rumman Ahmad, in his welcome address had briefed the audience about the salient features of Tissot FIFA World Cup 2010 Predictor Game while also throwing light on the Tissot EPL Predictor game.

The Tissot EPL Predictor game, it may be recalled, had offered awarded weekly, monthly and overall prizes which included cash prizes, watches and other gifts from Tissot, as well as audio equipment from Bose.

The Tissot FIFA World Cup 2010 Predictor Game comprises of two competitions. The first one asks for predictions of interesting tournament statistics such as the total number of goals scored, fastest goal and who will score the first goal as each question will be awarded points and the winner will be the person with the highest points tally.

The second competition relates to matches and participants have to predict the scoreline in every match. However, they don't have to be totally correct to earn points. While an accurate prediction earns full points, one can also make semi-accurate predictions such as the correct number of total goals, the winner of the match. to earn partial points and stay in the game.

Tissot has been associated with the football for over a decade by having Michael Owen, the English and Manchester United striker as their Brand Ambassador. Judging by the ever-increasing popularity of football in the country, they have backed this venture enabling Pakistanis to get an interactive experience of this premier football showcase.

The sports partnerships have always been an integral part of the Swiss watchmakers they have been involved in timing world class sporting events for decades. Partnering with active athletes like Michael Owen also underlines the dynamic nature of the brand.

Tissot, the ‘Innovators by Tradition’, has been pioneering craftsmanship and innovation since its foundation in 1853. It’s a member of the Swatch Group, the world’s largest watch producer and distributor. For over 154 years the company has had its home in the Swiss watch making town of Le Locle in the Jura Mountains but now also has a presence in over 150 countries. www.tissot.ch provides more information about the company.

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MSAP Collegiate Programme launched at Sultan Mohamed Shah Aga Khan School

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

There’s more gladdening news for the mind sports enthusiasts of Karachi in particular. The Mind Sports Association of Pakisan (MSAP), having joined hands with the Aga Khan Youth Sports Board for Pakistan (AKYSBP), have launched their Collegiate Programme at the Sultan Mohamed Shah Aga Khan School located in Karimabad.

Tariq Rasheed Khan, Director, MSAP, who is spearheading the Collegiate Programme, was delighted with the participation of over five hundred students in the inaugural session at the Aga Khan School on May 28.

“It augurs very well for the future of mind sports. If the students’ community could be motivated into it in such big way we are quite confident of accomplishing our cherished objectives sooner than later,” he observed.

Tariq Rasheed, himself led the seven-member MSAP delegation at the Aga Khan School in Karimabad, was accompanied by the famous chess International Master, Mahmood Lodhi, having won the national title on the highest number of occasions, besides Azhar Javed, Emad Mirza, Javed Shamim, Mohammad Umair Kausar and Islahuddin.

“The management of the Sultan Mohamed Shah Aga Khan School extended great help in spreading the message as they distributed the registration forms among the students for submission at a later stage. The Principal of school desired starting mind sports activities at the campus three days a week,” Tariq Rasheed, who is also the President of the Pakistan Bridge Federation (PBF), remarked.

“The AKYSBP have also expressed the desire to have the MSAP Collegiate Programme launched at their campuses Lahore and Islamabad,” he disclosed.

The MSAP has already started conducting weekly classes for the enthusiasts of chess and scrabble at the Aga Khan Gymkhana after having reached an agreement with the AKYSBP.

The MSAP and AKYSBP had to start the classes following the enthusiasm generated in the two-day event conducted to train and coach boys and girls in the games of chess and scrabble. The training and coaching progrommaes were spread over two successive days over the weekend.

The total of students in various age groups participating in the opening session was 41 with 26 of them registering in chess and 15 in scrabble. Quite a few talented and promising players were short listed for further training and coaching by the experts under the auspices of the MSAP.

It was announced that the talented players from this programme will be selected to get further training with the scrabble players to be invited to play in the regular events of the Pakistan Scrabble Association (PSA) held at Hotel Beach Luxury while the chess playing students will get the opportunity of unfolding talents at the Russian Cultural Centre.

The MSAP, founded a couple of years ago, has taken upon the responsibility of spreading bridge, chess and scrabble, classified as mind sports, in the educational institutions. They launched their collegiate programme in bridge, chess and scrabble here at Institute of Business Management (IoBM) last year. They had also organized the first-ever National Mind Sports Games in Karachi in August 2008.

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Has Rohit Sharma come of age finally?

By Syed Khalid Mahmood

Rohit Sharma, who couldn’t score a century in his first 42 One-day Internationals, has suddenly scored a couple in as many games in the ongoing three-nation series in Zimbabwe.

Sharma happens to be one of the so many enterprising young Indian batsmen to have come to the fore in the recent past but like the majority of the newcomers he has not been able to provide the comfort to the selectors to consider him a complete package.

Sharma’s talent as an explosive batsman has been beyond doubt but his application and shot selection has left a lot to be desired. He has been one of those young guys who have struggled to do justice to their talents.

He has played a few magnificent knocks under pressure in international cricket. But he has lacked the consistency to capture the imagination of the team management. He has possessed the skills as well as the temperament but he needed to put runs on the board on a regular basis to cement his place in the star-studded Indian batting line-up.

With the ‘seniors’ having been rested for the Zimbabwe series there’s an opportunity for the young guns like him, Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina to prove the point that they have graduated to the next level.

Sharma appears to have grabbed the golden chance with both hands, having scored centuries in the first two outings against different oppositions. His century in the opening game against India had gone in vain but the one against Sri Lanka a couple of days later was a worthy match-winning effort.

He must sustain this form in the rest of the tournament to dispel the impression of him being just another flashy batsman. He has to convert those half centuries into centuries and make them count in order to retain his slot when the likes of Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni return to the folds.

Sharma is also a brilliant fieldsman, besides being a more than useful off-spin bowler. Most importantly he has the nerves to come to terms with the pressure-cooker situations that make him a most sought after all-round cricketer. He has been in and out of the Indian limited-overs side without playing Test cricket yet despite achieving the rare feat of scoring two hundreds in the 2008-09 Ranji Trophy final.

He had first hit the headlines in 2006 during the Under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka. He made his ODI debut in 2007 but it were his heroics in the inaugural World Twenty20in South Africa later the same year which got him recognized as a special talent. He was one of the architects of India’s title win. Sharma continued to impress and his couple of dashing knocks helped India win the CB Series in Australia in early 2008.

Then came the slump as he struggled for runs in his first two first-class seasons for Mumbai but he performed exceptionally well in the shortest version of the game while playing for the Deccan Chargers, who bought him over for US$750,000, during the Indian Premier League (IPL).

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