President Lahore City Cricket Association Khawaja Nadim Ahmad has welcomed the announcement by Punjab Chief Minister that 50 grounds would be developed in the city for the revival of the game. “By having that number of grounds in all parts of the city, we will be able to bring a revolution in the game to reestablish Lahore’s status as the main nursery of cricket,” he said.
Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif recently announced to develop 50 grounds in the city to help promote cricket while inspecting the Ittifaq Cricket Ground recently. He also announced to build necessary facilities including pavilion and allied facilities besides laying of wickets. “Such a step was never taken before for the development of the game and we firmly believe by that large scale infrastructure in different parts of the city will give cricket a boom,” he asserted.
He said these grounds will be named after different business houses and will be handed over to different clubs. “The sponsor business houses will be responsible for their maintenance and the clubs whom these grounds will be allocated would also be sharing this responsibility,” said LCCA chief, himself a former first class cricketer. He said the LCCA has recently been handed over 15 grounds at various cricketing centres by the Punjab government.
“Eight grounds are old ones and seven are newly-prepared and with the addition of these modern facilities there will be no excuse for not having adequate infrastructure,” said Nadim. “We are thankful to Punjab Chief Minister for his keen interest,” he said. He also expressed its gratitude to Punjab Horticultural Authority for developing these 15 grounds in modern arenas with the addition of latest facilities.
He said the LCCA is endeavouring for the betterment of the game by mobilizing all the resources. He said he was delighted that all the office bearers of the LCCA and different zones were supporting his efforts by extending all out cooperation. “We have one objective in mind: promoting cricket by generating maximum activity at club level and it is a good sign that clubs affiliated with respective zones are actively taking part in our Chief Minister Summer League which will be a step forward to eliminate the existence of bogus and dead clubs,” he said.
Nadim said that the LCCA will be maintaining the record of performance of players to select Lahore’s teams for PCB domestic tournaments under a transparent and performance based formula.
