The Dar Hockey Academy hopes it will get back its traditional venue as the outer ground of the National Hockey Stadium has got AstroTurf after four years. The academy has been organising practice sessions of its players at the main National Hockey Stadium ground for the last four years, sharing the ground with the club of Rana Zaheer. The Dar Academy faces problems in holding sessions, whenever, the Pakistan Hockey Federation organises its own events, because only one ground is available at the National Hockey Stadium.

Academy mentor Olympian Tauqir Dar says a new AstroTurf has been laid down at the outer’s ground of the stadium with some added facilities of the floodlights and two changing rooms, making it more convenient venue for the players. He said the Punjab government had also laid down AstroTurf in six other cities with floodlights, which was a great step towards the promotion of hockey. He said if all the infrastructure was used in a systematic way, the game of hockey might regain its past glories.

As the provincial set up will cease to exit by the end of this month, several ongoing sports projects are being completed. They include a swimming pool, a tennis court, new tartan track at the Punjab Stadium and now the hockey AstroTurf, all in the Nishtar Sports Complex.

Hopefully, the installation of floodlights at the Lahore City Cricket Association ground would also be completed before May 31. The contractor of the LCCA’s project has left the work incomplete. The work, which was halted some two months back, could not be resumed because of some changes in the early plan.

This project has already been delayed for almost three years. These all projects would have completed in one to two years, had there been no delays. Anyhow, now the Sports Board of Punjab, the custodian of all the projects, should make the maximum and proper usage of these sports infrastructure to groom the talent to earn laurels for the country.

The Sports Board Punjab (SBP) started a big boxing sports gala last week, by organising the Inter-Division Boxing Championship at the Gymnasium Hall in Nishtar Sports Complex. Around 117 male and 22 female boxers are representing their divisions. Up to Rs2.6m will be distributed among winners of the three classes – Elite, Junior and Girls. British-Pakistani boxer Aamir Khan will be the guest of honour at the concluding ceremony of the event next week. It is a big tournament as first the SBP held trials in different cities to pick boxers out of 800 boxers. Of them, 117 males and 22 females were picked for the championship. Though the prize money is Rs2.6m, expenditures are Rs70m. The SBP should organise such events in athletics, badminton, wrestling, kabaddi, body-building, hockey, karate, judo, swimming and so on. The players of these games deserve equal opportunities. Earlier, the SBP also released Rs50m to the Punjab Squash Association, ignoring other provincial sports associations. There is a need to avoid favouritism and instead a plan be prepared to hold more competitive tournaments.

Before the start of the boxing event, traditional dances were displayed by different groups. The boxers of Lahore, Gujranwala, Multan, DG Khan, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Bahawalpur and Sahiwal divisions marched past before the start of the bouts.

A ceremony to pay tribute to international umpire Aleem Dar was held this week at the LCCA ground by his parent cricket club P and T Gymkhana. Aleem was honoured for being the first umpire of the cricketing history supervising 350 international matches. Aleem has also earned the distinction of winning the award of best umpire of the ICC in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and now he has become the umpire, having supervised the most number of international matches. Dar, currently, 50, still has 10 years to continue his umpiring career with the ICC.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2018