LAHORE: The ABL National Senior Men’s Volleyball Champion­ship will be staged at Islamabad’s Liaquat Gymnasium from May 12 to 18.

“Teams from Army, Navy, PAF, Wapda, Police, Railways, HEC, POF Wah, Pakistan Boards, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh, Fata, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan will feature in the championship,” president of the Pakistan Volleyball Federation (PVF) Chaudhry Mohammad Yaqoob, flanked by ABL official Tahir Yaqoob Bhatti, said at a press conference on Monday.

The draws will be taken out at the venue in the presence of the managers of all participating teams, he added.

Yaqoob said the semi-finals of the 49th edition of the championship would be held on May 17 and the final on May 18.

Federal Minister for Inter-provincial Coordination Riaz Hussain Pirzada will be the chief guest at the closing ceremony. The event will be inaugurated by IPC Secretary Mohammad Ali Gardezi.

Yaqoob regretted the infighting going on between two groups of the PVF for the last three years had already damaged the game a lot, adding “as now the dust has finally settled efforts are needed to be made on war footing to resurrect the game in Pakistan, which possesses immense potential in volleyball”.

He revealed that the PVF was working on a summary to prepare a very effective programme for promoting the game from club to national level.

The PVF, Yaqoob further said, would try its utmost to seek funds for developing the game from the Pakistan Sports Board as the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) was planning.

According to some media reports, the current PHF had decided to look for huge development funds — to the tune of around Rs1.68 billion — from the federal government. The staggering amount is more than double what the previous PHF management headed by Akhtar Rasool was demanding from the federal government, but he failed to get the demand met.

Meanwhile, the PVF president said Pakistan would participate in the Asian U-20 Volleyball Championships to be held in Taipei from July 9 to 17.

The fifth Asian Beach Games in Vietnam (Sept 24 to Oct 3 this year) is the second international event, in which Pakistan’s senior team will take part.

Yaqoob said the PVF was also planning to organise a national league in July this year, besides holding the national beach event in Karachi in September and the national junior championship in October (venue yet to be decided).

The national women’s championship would be the last event of the federation this year to be hosted by Lahore in November, the PVF president added.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2016