December 19, 2002	Thursday	Shawwal 14, 1423

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LAHORE, Dec 18: Baseball Federation of Asia (BFA) will provide a coach and a pitching machine at its own expense to enable Pakistan to field a strong team for the main round of the Asia Cup to be held in Japan in November next year.

Pakistan have qualified for the event, after  taking second position in the Asia Cup qualifying round which was held in Bangkok, Thailand early this month.

Pakistan team reached Lahore from Bangkok Tuesday night.

Pakistan Baseball and Softball Federation (PBSF) secretary, Khawar Shah, said that the BFA secretary Maeda, had announced the decision  during the qualifying round as he was very impressed by the performance of the team and  hoped with more modern coaching facilities it could possibly qualify for the Olympics-2004.

Top two teams of the Asia Cup will qualify for  the Olympics.

Khawar added that Asia Cup was a tough competition as South Korea, Taiwan and host Japan, ranked as the three leading teams out of the world’s five top teams will be competing in the championship.

Khawar who was also the manager of Pakistan team remarked that the win against Thailand in the preliminary round in Bangkok was most significant as Thailand had 30 baseball stadiums whereas Pakistan did not even have one .

He pointed out that China which defeated Pakistan in the final, was one of the top teams of Asia. It had to play the qualifying round after BFA suspended its ranking for not participating in the last Asia Cup final round which was held in Taiwan. China refused to visit Taiwan due to a long outstanding political dispute between the two countries.

He said that the federation wanted to award  some cash incentives to the Pakistani players, but at the moment it was not possible because the federation was in debt.