Asian Baseball 5 C’ship delayed

LAHORE: While the coronavirus has infected all walks of life around the world, sports is also affected by this virus. Many national and international sports competitions have also suffered due to this epidemic.

According to Pakistan Federation Baseball President Syed Fakhr Ali Shah, a number of international baseball events have been postponed due to the spread of the coronavirus worldwide and now the matches will be played on new dates. The first Asian Baseball 5 Championship to be played in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in April 2020, has also been postponed. Now the championship will be played in September or October 2020. Final dates will be announced later.

According to Syed Fakhr Ali Shah, both senior and junior teams of Pakistan will be participating in the event. The top teams from both categories of the event will be eligible to attend the first Baseball Five World Cup scheduled in December 2020 in Mexico.

Syed Fakhr Ali Shah added that the World Baseball Softball Confederation has introduced the Baseball 5 game for the first time and since it is a Gender Quality Game and is also included in the Youth Olympics in which men and women join the same number of teams. Therefore, each team consisting of 8 players must have four men and four women players, while 5 players take part in a match, of which there must be at least 2 players of one gender. The Asian Championship was scheduled to take place in April before Corona arrived and our teams were ready to participate. The 20-member squad consisted of female and male players and officials from other parts of the country, including Punjab, Khyber Pakhtonkhaw and Sindh. In addition, our two officers will also attend the Baseball Five Training Seminar in Kuala Lumpur during the Championship.