Blind women cricketers’ camp begins at Abbottabad

LAHORE: Pakistan Blind Cricket Council’s training and coaching camp for women blind cricketers was inaugurated Saturday at Abbottabad.

This six-day long training camp, first of its kind, will last till July 5 at Abbottabad Public School Cricket ground in which 32 female blind cricket players and 9 female coaches will get orientation and training about rules, techniques and method of Cricket for the visually challenged. The PBCC is seeing it as a first step towards the rights and privileges of women and girls with visual impairment to take part on an equal basis in the most popular sport in Pakistan.

Chairman PBCC, Syed Sultan Shah and his wife Prof Nusrat Shabbir, Aslam Khan Director Sports APS, Mst Gul Rukh District Sports Officer Abbottabad and other female prominent personalities of Abbottabad attended the inaugural ceremony.

Addressing the audience Syed Sultan Shah said that “Sports will bring confidence in the lives of women with blindness and they will surely brighten the name of Pakistan in the field of Cricket.” He said that PBCC is thankful to Interloop to come forward as the leading sponsor of the Women Blind Cricket training camp and Brien Holden Vision Institute Pakistan (The Australian Eye Care Research Institute) working to eliminate vision impairment and avoidable blindness is also supporting this initiative. Whereas, the 2nd Phase of the training camp will take place in Lahore in September 2018 in which the next group of 35 girls will get training. Nafees Ahmed, the Head Coach of Pakistan Women Blind cricket team, will supervise the training camp. He remained the Coach of Pakistan men’s blind cricket team and under his coaching Pakistan had won two World Cups in 2002 and 2006.