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Legends v Champions: Successful series bodes well for future events, says Nawaz

PSF Secretary hoping to hold international tournaments in Karachi, Lahore

Nabeel Hashmi April 14, 2016

The success of the Legends v Champions series led to the PSA allowing the PSF to hold four international events this year, two more than last year. PHOTO: FILE

KARACHI: Following the success of the Legends v Champions series, the Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) is hoping to hold future Professional Squash Association (PSA) tournaments, in which international participants are expected, in Karachi and Lahore as well.

Currently, the PSF is only allowed to host PSA tournaments in Islamabad only, while other major venues such as Karachi and Lahore continue to miss out on such events.

However, with the successful staging of the $40,000 series, in which each match had a prize money of $8,000, PSF Secretary Amir Nawaz is confident of holding future tournaments in cities other than the federal capital.

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“The successful completion of the series with Egypt strengthens our case of asking the PSA to allow us to hold events in Karachi and Lahore,” Nawaz told The Express Tribune. “Karachi and Lahore are major cities and if we want to revive the sport, we must utilise all available resources.”

Nawaz further revealed that the PSF will organise a total of six tournaments this year, with the PSA sanctioning the budget for four $25,000 events and two $10,000 events, which in itself is a major show of support from the global body as the PSF was allowed to hold only three $25,000 events in the past two years.

Before this, the PSF only held $10,000 events which did not feature any foreign players.

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With the addition of more events to the calendar, Nawaz believes the lower-ranked players will have more opportunities to improve their rankings over the year.

“Now even our lower-ranked players have a platform to play qualifiers and improve their rankings,” he added. “We hope that the PSA would automatically give us some $50,000 tournaments next year otherwise we’ll push our case to get at least one such event.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2016.

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