KARACHI: In a bid to revive the game at the grassroots level, the Pakistan Table Tennis Federation (PTTF) has decided to conduct five more Masters Cup during the year and allocated them to different affiliated units.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will play host to the next at Peshawar from April 6 followed by Balochistan in June, Punjab in August and September and Islamabad in October.

The calendar was finalised at the annual general body meeting of the PTTF which was held at the Karachi Gymkhana on Sunday on the sidelines of the ongoing Masters Cup, the PTTF president, S. M. Sibtain, who presided over the meeting, told Dawn.

The National junior championship will be held at Mansehra in May while the Wapda plays host to the country’s premier national championship at Lahore in November.

Pakistan teams will feature in at least three international events abroad during the year. First, the team will travel to Sozhou, China, to compete in the world individual championship in April, followed by participation in South Asian junior and cadet championship at Dhaka in June and the Asian championship at Bangkok in September.

Conducting umpiring workshops alongside Masters Cup has been made mandatory while a national umpiring examination will be organised in July.

Chairman of the PTTF development committee, former international Arif Khan, has been tasked to prepare a plan for taking the game to the district level in order to unearth talent.

The meeting also gave its nod in favour of Oil and Gas Development Corporation (OGDC), National Highway Authority, Choromatex and Gold Bridge Media as associate member with no voting rights.

The first two firms that are on national level have been asked to give employment to youth besides patronising the game by sponsoring the provincial championships with the exception of Choromatex.

The latter has been tasked to stage an all-Pakistan event.

The AGM was preceded by executive committee and executive board meetings.

Besides the PTTF chief, the meeting was attended among others by Hafeezullah Khan (Baloch­istan), Sohail Mazhar (HBL), Shahid Akhtar Baloch and Khalid Mahmood Chaudhry (Punjab), Kifaya­tullah (Khyber Pakh­t­u­nkhwa), Saleem Ahmed and Azhar Khurshid (Sindh) and Khalid Mahmood Mirza (Wapda).

Representatives of Railways, HEC, Army and Islamabad were conspicuous by their absence.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2015

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