Baseball, archery venues to be developed in Punjab

LAHORE: Punjab’s Caretaker Sports Minister Shaukat Javed, while appreciating the improvement in sports infrastructure in the province, says the venues for baseball and archery will also be constructed.

Shaukat, who is also chairman of the Pakistan Federation Baseball and vice-president of the Pakistan Olympic Association, visited on Monday Sports Board Punjab for the first time after assuming charge as caretaker home and sports minister last month.

He also attended a review committee meeting on Monday during which he was briefed about the past and future sports projects of the province.

“While well-equipped playing field is a basic need of talented youngsters of any sport, there should also be stadiums for archery and baseball,” Shaukat said.

Though Pakistan has obtained fifth ranking in baseball, yet the country does not have a single baseball-specific stadium. Though the Punjab government has developed a significant number of stadiums, it lacked proper planning as instead of raising at least one stadium for every major sport at the divisional level, its primary focus remained only on providing cricket and hockey fields while other sports were neglected.

The minister said being part of baseball and the POA he was quite aware of the poor state of affairs of sports in the country.

“I am ready to cooperate fully for promoting sports in the province. Building top-level sports infrastructure in the province is definitely a huge task, and requires collective efforts,” he concluded.—Sports Reporter

Du Plessis calls for tougher punishments

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa captain Faf du Plessis has called for the International Cricket Council (ICC) to dish out tougher punishments for players found guilty of ball tampering.

“I know they [ICC] met a while ago but it doesn’t look like anything has changed. It’s still the same rules and stuff, so they need to change that,” du Plessis, who has twice been found guilty of ball tampering, told reporters ahead of South Africa’s tour of Sri Lanka. “The penalties need to be harsher for ball tampering.”

Ball tampering incidents have rocked the sport this year, prompting the ICC to contemplate stricter punishments after admitting that fines were not enough to serve as a deterrent.

“I have probably said it too much but there are too many grey areas when it comes to the ICC and the rules,” the 33-year-old right handed batsman added. “One, you want clarity and, two, you want consistency and that’s definitely something that’s not been part of that body of laws for a while now.”—Reuters

Farhan, Noor win tennis titles

KARACHI: Brilliant Farhan Altaf outplayed Robin Das 6-2,6-1 in the mens singles final while in the under-17 final, talented Noor-e-Mustafa cruised past Mohammad Ali to clinch the title in the 1st ACE Trophy Ranking tennis Championship which concluded at the Union Club here on Sunday.

Gulzar Firoze was the chief guest on the occasion.

Khald Rehmani AVP PTF said that in the history of tennis in Sindh, this was the first time that U-6 and U-8 singles ranking competitions were held in the tournament on mini tennis court and nets with modified soft red and orange balls.—Agencies

Dr Shah basketball camp begins today

KARACHI: Karachi Basketball Association in collaboration with Pakistan Sports Welfare Association will organize the Dr Mohammad Ali Shah summer basketball coaching camp at the Arambagh courts from Tuesday, July 3.

The camp will be inaugurated by Sports Minister Sindh, Dr Junaid Ali Shah at 6:00pm.

KBBA president Ghulam Mohammad said the camp will continue for 15 days where international basketball player Abdul Nasir will provide coaching to the budding players.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2018