In Pakistan there is no proper mechanism to run sports in a professional way. And political instability has been the sole cause of this. And it is because of this issue that we face uncertainty. Athletes and federations always remain tense due to lack of state plans and funding.

And it is because of the same issues that we have been struggling in almost every discipline. Unless there is a hefty budget and a proper mechanism both at the central and provincial levels things cannot click.

For years we did not have a full-time Director General of Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) before eventually Shoaib Khoso was brought in but he too had to go back due to his fake degree scandal. However, now Mohammad Yasir Pirzada has been brought in for three years. Let’s see how he handles things.

The IPC ministers and sports secretaries also come and go and there is no stability.

Unfortunately sports is under the IPC Ministry after its devolution and it has really been one of the major causes of our sports downfall.

Look, we have so many important assignments ahead in the next few months but we are too slow in taking major decisions.

Pakistan is supposed to host the 14th South Asian Games early next year but we don’t have things in order. We will hold the South Asian Games but how will we prepare our athletes for that in such a short time? We don’t bother about that.

The South Asian Games is a biennial event but we took such a long time to hold it because of our political instability.

Several meetings about these Games had been held in the PTI government also but nothing was done. The current government has expedited efforts to organise the Games and hopefully soon the dates will be formally announced.

But in such a short time we will not be able to prepare our athletes who direly need foreign coaches, foreign training and enough camps. Camps are still not in sight.

We are yet to hold camps for the 6th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games which will be held in Thailand in November.

In the past proper camps used to be held for such events but now we have big issues.

The government has restored departmental sports but departments are reluctant in forming their sports teams.

We have issues of parallelism. Some of our key players are being badly hit due to politics and we don’t bother about that.

Our football election issue is being mishandled and we don’t care about that. We don’t have proper international standard infrastructure and equipment and we have no worries.

We won the last medal in the 1992 Olympics and we don’t realise that our sports sector has almost been dead. We don’t allow even our star athletes to undergo training in the facilities owned by the government. I have so many examples.

In some sports our athletes have remarkable world ranking and we even don’t know about that. Our media is full of cricket coverage all the time. If our media don’t highlight Olympic sports, how will we grow in them and how will we be able to attract the attention of the authorities towards the problems in those sports.

Our sports budget is too little and it cannot meet the pressing demands of sports.

When the other world plans for the Olympics four years in advance we merely try to field our athletes in the Olympic Qualifiers without preparing them properly. We just fill the void and don’t want our athletes to qualify.

It’s a very bad situation. We don’t even encourage those athletes who win medals at major stages.

We don’t have nutritionists and we cannot provide proper diet and accommodation to even our elite athletes to prepare for international assignments.

Even our former Olympians cannot pay the electricity bill and this is a hugely demotivating factor for our youth who wish to adopt sports but are reluctant to due to no future prospects.

At every step there are hurdles for the growth of our athletes.

Sports is a major source of income in the developed world but we don’t realise this. Our state heads go abroad and witness other nations hosting global events in style but we don’t have the zeal to make Pakistan a centre for international sports events. The issue is that we think that sports is just entertainment.

Unless we start taking sports as an industry we will not be able to do anything noteworthy in this sector.

73.alam@gmail.com