Junior Badminton Championship: Pakistani contingent leaves for Thailand

Players confident of at least bettering last year’s showings.

KARACHI: The four-member Pakistan junior badminton team departed from Lahore yesterday to take part in the ongoing SCG Badminton Asia Junior Championship in Thailand.

The group is accompanied by Pakistan Badminton Federation (PBF) secretary Wajid Ali and will be taking part in only men’s individual and men’s doubles events which will commence July 13.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (K-P) 17-year-old Zohaib Khan Khalil, who will be representing Pakistan for the third time in the upcoming event, is confident of reaching at least the final-four this time.

“I lost in the pre-quarters in 2014 and quarter-final the following year. This time I am aiming to reach the final or at least the semi-final as I have improved my skills,” Khalil told The Express Tribune.

The young Khalil is currently one of Pakistan’s top four junior players along with Shahmeer Iftikhar, Shehroz Jamil and Punjab’s Ahmer Jalal, who is also part of the Thailand-bound contingent.

The young squad will have to face players from Thailand, Mongolia, China, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Japan, Chinese Taipei, Malaysia, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Myanmar, Philippines, Macau, Indonesia and Kazakhstan at the Championship.

“Some of the countries will be tough to play against as they have professional coaches, while we are trained by local coaches who are only level 2 qualified coaches and that too only when a major event is around the corner. This makes a huge difference in a player’s performance,” said Jalal.

“We only have one coach who doubles as our physical trainer, while in other nations they have separate physical trainers, coaches as well as a specialised trainers who stay on court during the match to increase the players’ confidence.”

Meanwhile, Jamil revealed that he and his teammates trained at the camp held by PBF but admitted that they could not focus fully on their game due to Ramazan. “We did not get much time last month due to Ramazan but we tried to give maximum time to training as we want to do well at the championship,” he added.

“We can’t win the championship but will try our best to finish higher than last year,” concluded Jamil.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2016.

Like Sports on Facebook, follow @ETribuneSports on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.