Mismanaged 56th National TT concluded, leading WAPDA

Islamabad by Nawaz Gohar
56th National Table Tennis Championship concluded in Quetta on Tuesday 14th September 2021. Perniya Khan clinched the senior women single title as the youngest girls at the age of 16 years when she outclassed Mehmooda Haider in a thrilling best of seven fights with scoring as 8-11,11-5, 11-8, 8-11, 14-12 & 11-8 and finished the battle on 4-2 sets. Both players belong to WAPDA. Perniya is also prevailing national junior champion.
Another outstanding performance carried out by Shah Khan (WAPDA) who sealed his team mate the former national champion and Pakistan’s most experienced player Asim Qureshi in straight set to achieve first national men’s single title.
What a fantastic performance shown by the two players in their respective category which shows a brilliant future of the Table Tennis to be appreciated. On the other all players were scared at the beginning of the championship as an unpleasant fight seen among the players due to mismanagement in the draws by the federation officials. They entered a mix double pair from Army at the eleventh hour in the draws for which their opponent from WAPDA did not accept this entry which was not shown in draws well before. This unlawful act by the federation official created havoc among the player caused chaos and fighting viral. It was the worst ever example in sports due to negligence of table tennis officials who were organizing the championship after 2018 two years late.
Further it was also noticed that the national championship was held on such tables which are not approved by ITTF and the table tennis federation used almost three years old stock of the balls which has already lost it’s natural bounce although they did enjoy well sufficient funds from Balochistan Government who were eager to promote sports in their province while TT federation just filled in the blank. Condom table with lower grade balls is the great hindrance between the natural talent of the players and their future practice to performance for any international event like forthcoming SAF Games in Pakistan.
Who will care the players? Innocent players work very hard for the prestigious event like national championship but federation don’t care about the player’s efforts while nation expects medals from them. Now it is liability of the Pakistan Sports Board who support grants in aid with other facilities to national sports federation can bind them not to involve in such malpractice and care the players in all technical affairs. PSB can investigate the narrated facts and impose penalties for all such federations as per new sports policy regarding caring of players and do not allow them to destroy the talent.