Lahore remained the hub of training camps last week with hundreds of men and women athletes attending them in 19 sports, including cricket.

The Sports Board Punjab (SBP) has set up training camps to prepare a contingent of around 400 athletes to participate in Quaid-i-Azam Inter-Provincial Youth Games starting from the next week.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) also organised a training camp at the National Cricket Academy for its Under-19 team as a part of its preparations for the Junior World Cup starting in New Zealand from Jan 12.

The sports board contingent is set to leave for Islamabad while a day earlier Pakistan junior cricket team left for Australia to play some short version matches before going to New Zealand to feature in the Junior World Cup.

The athletes attended the camps for nine days at different venues of Lahore, mainly in and around areas of the Nishtar Sports Complex which was giving a festive look due to presence of a large number of athletes.

In the games, Punjab will defend its title, which it had won last year by winning the major trophy of the sports gala, being organised by the Pakistan Sports Board. The province is likely to retain the trophy as no other province can compete it easily in the sports arena. In the inaugural edition in 2016, Punjab had won 61 gold medals, having a clear edge over the runner-up province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which bagged just 20 gold medals. Sindh, Balochistan, Islamabad, Fata, Azad Jammu Kashmir, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Gilgat-Baltistan all are fielding their contingents in the four-day sports event.

The Sports Board Punjab held a grand reception in honour of the contingent where Punjab sports minister announced cash prizes for the medal winners, ranging from Rs100,000 to Rs20,000 for different disciplines.

The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) has earmarked Rs1.3bn for the four-day gala. However, Punjab Olympic Association secretary Idris Haider Khawaja has objected to the allocation of the huge funds for the games. He has challenged Federal Sports Minister Riaz Pirzada that his organisation (Punjab Olympic Associations) was ready to hold the event at just 25pc of the funds being spent by the federal government. The Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) has also objected to the federal government regarding the event, telling it that it is not the domain of the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) to directly hold the activities as it is just a funding institution. But the federal government rejected the objections.

Pakistan junior cricket team left for Australia after attending a training camp. The Junior World Cup, an event of the ICC, is being staged after two years. In the last edition in Bangladesh in 2016, performance of Pakistan was not good as it claimed 5th place. The West Indies had won the title after defeating India. Pakistan have won the title twice in 2004 and 2006 while it remained runner-up in 1988 when the first World Cup was held in Australia. Pakistan also remained runner-up in 2014.

The Punjab government once again deprived the cricketers of the old Lahore by allowing construction of a sports complex on a plot near to Greater Iqbal Park which was used by about 18 cricket clubs.

It was the venue for the net practice of the old cricket clubs of old Lahore and most of them were working there since 1947. The Punjab government had uprooted the pitches of all 18 cricket clubs from the Iqbal Park five years back to build Greater Iqbal Park. After the completion of the new park, the Punjab government had laid nine pitches for the cricket clubs just last year, enabling the clubs to resume their activities. But last week, the government again ruined the pitches to build a sports complex.

Former ICC umpire Mian Aslam, who is also among the affected people as he ran the Muslim Gymkhana there for many decades. He says Rs2.3m were spent by the stakeholders, including the Sports Board Punjab, to lay nine pitches last year but now these pitches have again disappeared, depriving hundreds of cricketers of the old city areas to continue their net practices.

“The cricket clubs from the erstwhile Minto Park have produced great cricketers like Hafeez Kardar, Fazal Mahmood, Imtiaz Ahmad, Mudassar Nazar, Saleem Malik, Aamir Sohail and many others. Instead of declaring these clubs as historical monuments, the government is playing with the interest of the cricketers,” Mian Aslam says. He adds there is no cricket venue left for the cricketers from Shahdara to Chauburji areas now after the government’s plan of sports complex.

The Lahore Region has won Under-16 National Cricket Championship, an event of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), by defeating Karachi by five wickets at the Gaddafi Stadium.

Waqar Younus inaugurated the final while chief selector of national cricket team, Inzamamul Haq, came to grace the final and award the prizes.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2017