The ICC Champions Trophy matches being played in three cities of England and Wales -- London, Cardiff and Birmingham -- have entered an interesting phase. Top eight teams of the world are out to prove their mettle.

The matches between traditional rivals Pakistan and India, Australia and New Zealand, and England and Australia were expected to be explosive but sadly the first two matches disappointed the fans. Pakistan lost to India by a big margin of 124 runs. The one-sided match somewhat deprived the contest of excitement and thrill which the fans expected.

The match between the two teams from the Down Under -- Australia and New Zealand -- also failed to provide the flavour, not due to cricket itself but due to rain which forced the two teams to share two points equally. New Zealand is the first team to have made an exit from the tournament after losing the last match to Bangladesh.

The third clash between Australia and England was on at the time of filing this piece. The English team was playing without pressure of victory as it has already qualified for the semifinals. But, Australia are depending on the victory in this match, otherwise, they will follow the Kiwis to go back home from the first stage.

The performance of the Pakistan team is not impressive and its players have to excel in all departments to stay in the contest. The way it lost to India raised many questions over its future standing in the event. Sri Lanka showed the talent by outclassing Indians in their pool match which is so far the highest-scoring match. The Islanders achieved a winning target of 321 for the loss of just three wickets and that too with eight balls to spare. The result dented the reputation of Indians who are hot favourite in the title winners’ list.

The Pool-B is tough for all the four teams as their next round is like quarterfinals. The winners between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and India and South Africa will be in the semifinals.

However, after tasting defeat at the hands of India, Pakistan earned a morale-boosting victory against World No1 South Africa on D/L Methods as the match could not be completed due to rain. Now hopefully, Pakistan will have learnt the lesson and banking on the triumph against South Africa it will exhibit a better show against Sri Lanka to confirm a place in the semifinals.

Neither Pakistani batsmen nor its bowlers are in the top list of the performers. Azhar Ali and Muhammad Hafeez with identical score of 59 in two matches, Shoaib Malik (two matches) and debutant Fakhar Zaman (one match) with identical score of 31 and Babar Azam (39 runs in two matches) are key batsmen from Pakistan. But their scores are enough to expose the batting failure.

In the bowling side, the situation is also not encouraging as medium-pacer Hasan Ali is the topper with four wickets, whereas English bowler LE Plunkett is at the top of the list with eight wickets. Imad Wasim and Junaid Khan with two wickets each are the two other prominent bowlers from Pakistan. Its top bowlers like Muhammad Aamir and now out of the tournament on injury grounds Wahab Riaz have no wicket to their credit.

So far the hosts England are hot favourite for the title. Just two years back, England were struggling in the ICC One-day World Cup jointly held by New Zealand and Australia. In its pool of seven teams, England remained at the 5th, just ahead of minnows like Afghanistan and Scotland. But in two years time, England again built a strong team. Though Pakistan had qualified for the quarterfinals in 2015, instead of improving further it is still struggling to establish as a potential rivals.

Besides England, the performance of Bangladesh team is showing a remarkable improvement. So far six centuries have been scored in the tournament and among them Bangladesh’s batsmen have the lion’s share of scoring three. Tamim Iqbal, Mahmudullah and Shakib Al Hasan are the centurions.

The ‘poor relationship’ between the custodian of the Olympic Movement and the government both at central and provincial levels surfaced last week. The Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), the lone custodian of the Olympic Movement in Pakistan, held a meeting in Lahore to discuss the relationship with the government. Since the POA’s elections were held in 2012, the federal government has been in conflict with the POA. The main cause of the conflict is that the government wants a sway over the POA, which the International Olympic Council’s charter does not allow.

Despite having full backing of the government and the Army Sports Directorate, retired Maj Gen Akram Sahi panel lost the elections to incumbent body of the POA of retired Lt Gen Syed Arif Hasan twice in 2012 and 2016. But even after those defeats, the government and the Army Sports Directorate did not accept Arif’s body from the heart and once the suspension of Pakistan from the IOC was at the brink in 2015. Even after winning the elections in 2016, the relations between the POA and the Pakistan Sports Board and the provincial Olympic Associations with their respective Provincial Sports Board are not healthy.

It has damaged the sports of the country to a large extent. Instead of starting joint efforts to promote the sports in this era when no international teams are willing to visit Pakistan, the government and the POA are not on one page.

Due to this rift, the national level sports gala namely the 33rd National Games, the inter-provincial games, first National Beach Games have been pending for the last five years, destroying the future of many sportspersons. Hopefully, the government will realise its responsibility and it will start perfect relationship with the POA and other stakeholders for the betterment of the sports.

Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2017