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India hope to hire Pakistani squash coaches Back To Main

Waqar Hamza

KARACHI: India’s squash authorities want to hire Pakistani experts to train their coaches for a plausible time and hire permanent Pakistani coaches for the junior teams.

Samar Hamid, manager of the Indian team that is participating in a five-day squash tournament here, said this while talking to ‘The News’. The 4th Roshan Khan Junior Open Squash 2012 is being held at Pakistan Navy Roshan Khan Jahangir Khan Squash Complex from February 25 to 29.

He said that they managed to bring a team of just two players for this tournament because of visa delays. “Yet we have been warmly welcomed by the organisers and it is after five years that we are here, so it is absolutely amazing though we have lost our matches,” he said.

“We have plans to hire some Pakistani squash coaches or to send our coaches to Pakistan for training, but we haven’t talked about it with the squash authorities here though we surely have to have Pakistani coaches for our teams even for short periods.”

He said that Shahid Zaman of Pakistan coached Indian junior players for six weeks some three years back, which helped them a lot. “Therefore, we have intentions of getting our players to learn from Pakistani squash legends,” he said.

“We are hoping that Pakistan’s help will surely take our players to top in the world since Pakistan has a very long history of squash wins at the highest levels,” he said, adding that sending Indian coaches for training seemed to be the only feasible solution in the current scenario of Pakistan-India relations.

Samar said India has two good squash players currently, Sourav Ghousal, ranked 27th, and Dipika Pallikal, ranked 12th. “We will surely one day have world number 1 player from India because of the focus and attention squash is getting in India now,” he added.

He said four new squash courts had been built at Hamdard University, Delhi, and a tournament was planned there in October this year. “We are expecting Pakistani team to take part in our tournament. The last time Pakistani team participated in any Indian squash tournament was in 2010,” he added.

A team of 50 players from Pakistan participated in a tournament in India in 2007-08, 12 players in 2008-09, and 32 in 2010, he said.

He further said that they were ready to participate in the tournament that they were told was going to be held here in July this year. “If we get visas in time I have plans to bring 5 to 10 players this time because we enjoy playing here,” he added. The current team comprises Ranjeet and Junaid, who are number 1 and 2, respectively in the Indian junior squash rankings.