ABDUL JABBAR FAISAL
Islamabad (September 3, 2021):-Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshall, Zaheer Ahmed Baber has been elected the president of Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) in the 48th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of federation that held at Air Headquarters, Islamabad on Friday.
The General Council elected the head of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Baber as president of the squash federation, who later on, presided over the meeting. Besides squash legends, representatives from provincial squash associations, affiliated members and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) attended the proceeding of house.
Addressing the general council members, President PSF thanked participants for imposing their full confidence to him. While showing his satisfaction over revival of international squash in the country, President PSF emphasized that there was still a need of collective efforts by the provincial squash associations and affiliated departments like Pakistan Army, Navy, Wapda, SNGPL, PIA, etc to jointly work together and support the national cause of glorifying Pakistan squash at highest levels. He urged the players to focus on the game and further improve on the physical and mental strength.
Besides assuring support by PAF, the President PSF asked all member associations to generate further resources to meet the challenging tasks through an improved system. President PSF directed the member associations to promote squash and increase the pool of players to thousands and also ensure age verification at association level.
Zaheer Ahmed further stressed upon the implementation of a comprehensive training strategy to further groom the skills of our players. He also emphasized on the role of associations and departments in generating adequate funds from provincial governments and corporate sector to sponsor their players and events. He also directed all associations and affiliated departments to conduct maximum number of tournaments events every year.
The performance evaluation of provincial association for the year 2020 was also carried out by the General Council. The KP Squash Association was awarded Winner’s Trophy for Pride of Performance by the General Council. President PSF presented trophy to the Rep of provincial association and appreciated them for making their efforts despite the pandemic situation.
While he emphasized that PSF would continue to sponsor best men and women players in international events, he also directed the associations to generate adequate funds and sponsor for all their respective players for national and international events to afford them adequate exposure.
On this occasion, he advised associations to conduct the open trials of all age categories and conduct league matches to generate healthy competition among players. Squash is an individual game therefore, President PSF also urged the players to ensure their fitness to prove their worth in squash court by winning in every tournament at every level to glorify Pakistan in the game of Squash.
The meeting concluded with the hope that federal and provincial governments would provide adequate financial and administrative support to revive Pakistan’s power in the international arena of Squash.
