India abstains from ACC coaches course

Published October 22, 2002

LAHORE, Oct 21: India has not sent any delegates to Pakistan, to attend the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) special coaching course for national coaches which started Monday.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) high performance manager Bob Woolmer of South Africa is conducting the course.

Some 19 delegates from different Asian and African countries were invited to attend this course included of the former Indian Test bowler Roger Binny and another Indian Dr Vece Paes.

The ACC development manager, Zakir Hussain Syed, said that the Indians were facing visa problems and he expressed the hope that they would join the seven-day course.

Earlier, PCB chairman Tauqir Zia inaugurated the course.

Speaking on the occasion, the PCB chairman said that lot of talent in the country was being wasted due to non availability of sufficient number of qualified coaches. He said that Pakistan required 108 coaches only for the districts while a good number of experts in this field was the demand for schools and colleges.

He said that under the PCB Vision-2005 programme, Pakistan would prepare some 50 to 60 qualified coaches by the end of 2003. He said that the ACC was doing good efforts to develop cricket in the continent.

Tauqir said that all the development projects in Asia were running with the funds provided by the ICC from the income it earned by organising knock-out tournaments held in Bangladesh and Kenya.