PESHAWAR, Sept 24: Pakistan No.1 badminton player Wajid Ali has stressed the need of establishing academies for discovering talent from grass roots level.

“If PBF wants to develop the game in Pakistan it should establish academies in all the four province. In this way the upcoming talent would be provided a platform to hone their skills for the future,” he opined.

Wajid who’s ranking in the world is 50, disclosed that Pakistan was far behind in the international ranking because players were not imparted proper training and no incentives were provided to them.

“ Badminton is an expensive game and one cannot play without having any money all the time, therefore, considering the facts the PBF now awarded Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 to the winners and Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 to runners-up,” he added.

He also appreciated the efforts of the federation for giving nine to ten international tournaments exposure to a good player that had not been criteria in the past.

“It is fact and known phenomena that playing against superior should further boost up the game of individual, therefore providing international exposure to the youngsters would definitely put up with the required fruits,” he explained.

Wajid is currently preparing himself for tough engagements like Indonesian Open from Oct 10, Philippines Open, scheduled on Oct 26 and Ireland Open to be held in November this year.

“By giving good performances in these tournaments, I hope my ranking would be further improved at the world level while the Pakistani double pair of Zeeshan and Rizwan are holding 106 ranking in the world which is much improved from what it was two years back,” he added.

He expressed satisfaction over the gradually improving ranking of the country in the more then 500 nations associated with game at world level.

He said India was doing lot of work for the promotion of badminton and spending more money than Pakistan.

“India is a bigger country and has lot of sponsors but in Pakistan if money spent on the game could be utilized properly, better results could be achieved,” he added.—APP