The South Asia Judo Championship is scheduled to start at Islamabad from May 9 and the Pakistan players, who were given international exposure over the last two years for this big event, are not part of the team. Over the last two years, the Pakistan Judo Federation gave international exposure to 15 players by sending them to different events in Morocco, Korea, China, Japan, Bangladesh and Dubai and out of those 15 players, just three were selected for the South Asian Championship.
Recently, the federation held trials and selected 12 boys and eight girls and just three players out of those 15, appeared for trials and are now part of the team. The PJF, as per directives of the Pakistan Sports Board, spent millions of rupees on giving international experience to players like Shah Hussain Shah, Ayat Ullah, Muzaffar Iqbal, Zahid Iqbal, Zeshan Butt, Zafar Ali, Karamat Butt, Tanveer Ahmad, Muhammad Razi Farhan, Shahzaib Shah, Muhammad Miraj, Naveed Ahmad, Ghazanfar, Pervaiz Khan, Yasir but after trials the players selected included these: under-60kg: Adnan, Ghulam Fareed; under-66kg: Yasir Khan, Javid Khan; under-73kg: Amjad, Irfan; under-80kg: Kramat Butt, M. Azhar; under-90kg: Naeem Butt, Abid; under-100kg: Pervaiz Khan, Shabbir.
Only Yasir, Karamat and Pervaiz are the players who made trips to international events while remaining players did not have any experience and majority of them are first timers. Other participating teams like India are sending their top judokas for this regional championship while all the leading Pakistani players have either refused to take part in this event or have simply not participated in the trials.
The result is that Pakistan will be fielding not even their second string players bereft of any experience of high level tournaments.
When contacted, PJF secretary said that all the arrangements were finalised and all the teams would be reaching Islamabad by the evening of Monday and the event would formally roll into action on May 11. On the players selection, he said that some of the players were injured and that was why they did not participate in the trials.
“The trials are open and all were invited to play for the country and it’s up to them to appear in the trials,” he said. He also said that some players were also not released by their department WAPDA. The question is why WAPDA did not release their sportsmen to represent the country. When this scribe tried, no WAPDA official was available for comments. The PSB and the Ministry of Sports are working with the with the PJF but no one knows what is the reason of such mass absence by top players.
The PSB and the sports ministry should take notice of the issue and resolve the matter before the start of the event because millions of rupees have been spent on the training and grooming of the senior judo players and they are not appearing in this big event. It has been learnt through reliable sources that the senior players have boycotted the trials organised by the PJF due to the rude attitude of the top officials of the Federation. They have stated that the affairs of the Federation were in the hands of non-professional people who do not understand basics of the game.
