Baseball body awaits Minsitry’s decision on Asian Games

Pakistan is ranked sixth in Asia and 31st in the world. —APP/File Photo

LAHORE: The secretary of the Pakistan Federation Baseball (PFB), Khawar Shah, says the national team deserves to participate in the forthcoming Asian Games on merit but a final decision in this regard is to be taken by the federal Sports Ministry and the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA).

“By winning the Asia Cup qualifying round in Islamabad last month Pakistan now ranked sixth in Asia and has an automatic place in the gala. The participation in the games will help Pakistan also to improve its world ranking considerably,” the secretary told Dawn.

He said that before winning the Asia Cup qualifying round, Pakistan was ranked at 31st position in the world and hopefully it would be improved considerably after the fresh ranking which was yet to be announced.

He refused to comment when asked the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) was not willing to send baseball team.

There are reports that infighting between some officials of the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) with the federal Sports Ministry and non-healthy cooperation of the PSB with any national sports federation as well as Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) is serving nothing but creating a deadlock and personal scores are being settled, while taking the decision of including the games in the contingents.

The POA and the PSB has not decided any date to finalise the contingents for both the games.

On the other end, the PSB has been running training camps for many games, without taking a decision whether any of them will participate or not.

POA president Arif Hasan said that soon the meeting would be held with the PSB and the Sports Ministry to finalise the contingents.