Ali urges provinces to work together for boxing

KARACHI: Pakistan boxing coach Ali Bakhsh on Saturday advised the provinces to shun politics and work for the uplift of boxing.

“I feel the provinces are not playing their role in the development of boxing. Sindh used to be a major nursery of boxing but we don’t see new talent now,” Ali told ‘The News’ in an interview. “If you try to create cleavage even within districts then you are destroying the game,” he added.

For the last few years Ali has been constantly serving as Pakistan coach. Besides having an illustrious boxing career during which he won several international medals for Pakistan, Ali is one of the two Pakistani coaches who hold an AIBA three-star coaching license. Arshad Hussain of Army is the other who has this license.

Ali said that the divided boxing fraternity could not serve boxing in befitting way.

“Unless all the stakeholders including provinces and departments work hard like a single family, boxing could not be promoted,” Ali conceded.

Ali worked hard in the era of outgoing Pakistan Boxing Federation (PBF) president Doda Bhutto as a coach but as there was no solid plan from the former set-up so nothing productive could be achieved. Barring now pro-boxer Mohammad Waseem, who lifted medal in the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games in 2014, no other boxer could achieve anything noteworthy in the reign of Doda which lasted eight years.

However more recently a new PBF set up was created with Khalid Mehmood, who also happens to be the secretary of Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) taking charge as the PBF chief.

Ali said that the new PBF set-up should focus on organising more domestic events.

“I would advise the PBF to hold maximum domestic competitions as it is the only way through which we will be able to get new boxers,” Ali added.

“There is also need of introducing national league and holding frequent rankings tournaments so that the real stuff could be hunted down and brought to the mainstream for further make-up,” the former international said.

“When we get eight to ten boxers in a single weight, the cream could then be provided foreign training and the back-up would be trained at home. By doing this way we will be able to prepare strong back-up,” the coach said.

Meanwhile Ali, who has been preparing lot for the Islamic Games here at PSB Coaching Centre, hoped that a better stuff could be prepared for the Games as they had sufficient time at their disposal.

“We have three months before the Games and I hope a fighting lot would be prepared,” Ali added. The Islamic Games would be held in the Azerbaijan’s capital Baku from May 12-22.