IN an important step towards promoting cricket at grassroots level, Prime Minister Imran Khan while chairing a meeting on Saturday approved a framework for promotion of school and domestic cricket.
Though details of the framework were not revealed yet we understand it will be aimed at building necessary infrastructure at educational institutions to generate and groom real cricketing talent.
Especially, Punjab government is leading efforts to promote cricket at educational institutions. It has not only established infrastructure in schools but moving a step further is now organising School Cricket Championship from 15th September.
Certainly this will be a sort of encouragement for the young lot to project their talent and become future cricketers.
Other federating units should also follow the suit as such healthy activities also play crucial role in students’ growth and development.
However, it is unfortunate that our focus only remains cricket and in the process we are totally neglecting other equally important sports besides our national sport Hockey.
Sport infrastructure must be developed at educational institutions where students can play sports of their choice. We have to uplift other games also to revive our old glory in sports. There was a time when our sportsmen used to bring laurels for the country be it Squash, Hockey or Snooker.
Our recent performance in Tokyo Olympics was really dismal and warranted urgent action on part of PTI government. The Federal Cabinet has recently entrusted the job of framing a new sports policy to Minister for Inter Provincial Coordination Fehmida Mirza.
The policy should be prepared in consultation with all stakeholders including legends of different games.
The focus must be to promote games at the grassroots level besides investing in building necessary infrastructure and fully assisting the players.
