The labourers and grounds men are hard at work even on a hot Sunday afternoon as the black Mercedes Benz sandwiched between two police mobiles slowly comes to a halt outside the ground gates. The men, busy spreading manure on the soil to plant grass on it, don’t even notice the footsteps approaching them but the visitor walking towards them takes in every detail of the goings-on. And he is not happy with the way they are going about their work.
“Stop!” He commands, as the men turn on their heels to come face to face with the Sindh sports minister Dr Mohammad Ali Shah. Shaking his head in disapproval, the minister orders them to collect the manure they have spread already on one-third of the ground’s laser-levelled surface to one side and plant the grass in the soil. Only when it takes root a week or so later are they to spread the manure over it. “Otherwise you’ll burn the grass before it has even taken root,” Dr Shah explains to the men who reluctantly start undoing their mistake.
Known for his services to cricket, the provincial sports minister—who is also the president of the Sindh Olympics Association—claims that he is trying to better all other sports as well.
He cites the annual Sindh Games as an example towards popularising sports in the province. The provincial government just held the 15th Sindh Games in Mirpurkhas, the fourth edition of the games in Dr Shah’s tenure.
“You hear so much about Punjab Games but the Punjab government always holds these games in Lahore whereas we in the past four years have held our games in Karachi, Larkana, Sukkur and Mirpurkhas. It is easier to hold sporting events in big cities but the idea here is to involve the entire province and its people. It is not easy to accommodate 2,500 athletes in these small cities but we accepted the challenge and even improved the lives of the local people in the process,” says the minister.
At the recently concluded 15th Sindh Games in Mirpurkhas, the athletes and players were accommodated in hostels, rest houses, schools and colleges all over the city. In order to make that happen, the provincial sports ministry first went about renovating these buildings.
“The classrooms there didn’t even have fans and we installed fans in each building there besides introducing solar lights, renovating the table tennis hall and building walls around the Gama Stadium, where the games were held. So the entire city benefited through the hosting of the games there. Then the people in the cities like Larkana and Sukkur were also exposed to live sports bringing public participation into the whole affair,” says Dr Shah. “Meanwhile, we also try introducing a few extra games in each edition. The Mirpurkhas Games had as many as 50 genres,” he points out.
“This year we introduced cricket in the form of an exhibition match, Moon Tai [a martial art] and women’s arm wrestling, and events for the disabled, too. In all there were 35 sports for men and 15 for women,” he shares.
On being reminded that the Mirpurkhas Games didn’t include one of the regular Olympic sports—swimming—the minister explains, “Well, it is a tradition to hold all events in the city that hosts the games but there are no swimming pools in Mirpurkhas. We’ll have swimming in the 16th Games in Hyderabad next year,” he promises.
However, despite giving so much attention, the only sport we seem to be doing well in is cricket and, to an extent, tennis. “There is plenty of glamour in cricket, which obviously attracts financial resources, making cricket a rich sport,” the provincial minister defends, “This is why we want to popularise other sports as well.”
There’s also the fact that athletes and players in Sindh hardly get any chances or recognition in spite of their abundance in talent. Dr Shah admits that what is happening is not fair. “We are working within our limitations. You compare our sports budget to Punjab’s sports budget. We hardly get 0.009 [point zero zero nine] per cent of the total budget allocated for Sindh. It is not even one per cent and still we are trying to achieve so much from it,” he points out. “It is also due to the hard work we have done in these last four years that the Chief Minister of Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah was kind enough to increase our grants by 25 per cent twice in the last two years,” he says.
The government, says Dr Shah, is doing all it can to improve the conditions. “There are grounds and stadiums already in use and under construction for both men and women, including the First All Pakistan Women Hockey and Football Stadium, the North Nazimabad Gymkhana (NNG) Ground and the Rehmania Ground in Karachi, the first sports complex that was constructed in Dadu, which has a hockey and football ground along with a tennis court and basketball court and several indoor sports facilities,” he explains.
Besides that, the provincial government is also working for the betterment of veterans. “Earlier this year, I presented boxer Jan Mohammad, who is suffering from cancer, with Rs500,000. Similarly, former Pakistan football team player Qadir Bux Baloch [Putla] was presented with Rs300,000 as our former football captain Abdul Ghafoor [(Majna] was given Rs50,000 to pay for his medical bills. Both have suffered strokes and are in need of medical care. I have also initiated the Legends’ Fund to help such stars,” he concludes. —S.H.