The national squad is scheduled to appear in Commonwealth and Asian Games besides appearing in Al-Rashid Cup slated to be held in Dubai next month.—File photo by APP

The game has suffered a lot in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa by devastation of the flood and the province now requires financial assistance to rehabilitate the players and their families and extending moral support to them.

The chairman of the Pakistan Volleyball Federation (PVF), Chaudhry Mohammad Yaqoob, told Dawn “Volleyball is an American sport and has suffered the most due to the floods. The volleyball facilities in Pakhtunkhwa, a new key talent hunting ground for the PVF, are largely submerged in flood waters and the only option left is to redevelop them while the solution is to play a five-match home and away series with India.”

The funds that will be generated from the series, he said, would be spent on the economic well-being of the volleyball players and reconstruction of damaged volleyball courts and structures.

The game, he said, was mostly played in Pabbi, Chammkani, Nowshehra, Akkora Khattak and Malakand areas of the province. He added that the future of the sport in these cities was bleak if adequate measures were not taken to redevelop the structure and generate funds.

Yaqoob informed that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was a major contributor to Pakistan's national volleyball squad with players like Naeem Jan, Shahrukh, Farooq Khan, Mohammad Ismail Khan, Syed Shuja Abbas, Nasir Khan and Aimal Khan part of ongoing training sessions, being held at the Pakistan Sports Board.

According to data gathered by Dawn, around 300 professional players were continuously featuring in domestic championships while around 1,000 regular enlisted players were featuring for local clubs alone in Pakhtunkhwa.

The national squad is scheduled to appear in Commonwealth and Asian Games besides appearing in Al-Rashid Cup slated to be held in Dubai next month.

“The funds will be generated from the marketing and sales of media rights and hopefully we [PVF] will meet our set target,” he said.

The PVF, he said, was also sending a dossier to the game's governing body (FIVB) on the loss that incurred on volleyball in the country in a bid to secure financial and material assistance.