‘Pakistan placed in easy baseball pool’

Head coach Hanif confident team will make it to the Asian Games semis.

KARACHI: National baseball team head coach Mussadiq Hanif claims that Pakistan have been given an easy pool this time around in the Asian Games, with world number two Japan, China and Mongolia named as their opponents in the event to be held in Incheon, Korea from September 19 to October 4.

“Pakistan have always been given a tough pool, but this time we are quite confident that we will make it to the semi-finals if we can beat China,” said Hanif while talking to The Express Tribune.



“We will focus primarily on beating the two low order teams so that we can join Japan in the next phase of the tournament.”

Pakistan will play their first match against Asian number one team Japan on September 23, after which they will face Mongolia on September 24 and will finally meet China on September 25 in the last pool match.

The national baseball team is going through its second phase of training which at the University of Central Punjab sports complex in Lahore.

“In the new plan for our training phase, we have started watching the videos of China to pinpoint their weak points and then work on exploiting them to our advantage,” concluded Hanif.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2014.

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