Baseball: South Korean coach pitches a foreign idea

Due to lack of facilities, Pakistan baseball team will train abroad.

KARACHI:

Lack of facilities at home and no international assignments has forced the Pakistan Baseball Federation (PBF) to send its team to South Korea in order to prepare for the Asian Championship.

Pakistan won last month’s South-West Asia Cup in Lahore under the new coach, South Korean Hwang Hoon Dong, which earned the team qualification for the Asian Championship.

“Dong really wants the team to play abroad and for him winning at home doesn’t really count,” PBF Secretary Pervaiz Khawar told The Express Tribune.

“What matters to him is the experience and by sending the team to South Korea, we can achieve just that.

“Our only international assignment this year is the Asian Championship in November and we’re very hopeful that the team will finish in the top-three.”

Khawar added that the two-week tour of South Korea, to take place next month, was the first phase of the training programme.

“We’ll call Dong to Pakistan in September so he can start training the players two months before the championship,” said Khawar before adding that the South Korean will also supervise the training camp for the under-16 side.

“We really want to use Dong’s expertise. He needs to be at the under-16 camp as well.”

Pakistan is ranked fifth in Asia and 21st in the world.  Khawar said that the team got to its current ranking from world number 31 in the space of a year and the trip to Korea – and a good show after that – will help them go further up.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 22^nd, 2012.