Pak squash coaching facing hard times

KARACHI: Pakistan has conducted only three squash coaching courses since 2013 which is the reason currently there is no qualified coach in the national coaching setup.

Pakistan conducted an Asian Squash Federation (ASF) sanctioned Level-2 coaching course in August 2013 in Islamabad and the next ASF Level-2 coaching course was held in October 2014 in Lahore while one ASF Level-1 coaching course was held in Islamabad in May 2016.

This year, Pakistan planned two (level 1 and 2) coaching courses in February from 10 to 17 but they could not be materialised due to the unavailability of international instructors because of Covid-19. "Instructors from Hong Kong and Malaysia were not available due to Covid-related restrictions in their countries," said a source, adding that the courses were not possible without any instructor from WSF. "The federation contacted Iran's Ali Reza for conducting those courses but he too was in the US at that time," said the source.

It is worth adding here that Pakistan is lagging far behind the Asian region as the other regional countries have held two courses per year on average since 2013. Pakistan has only three among 37 ASF Coaching Tutors in Asia: Fahim Gul (Level-3), Khalid Atlas (Level-1), and Yawar Aslam (Level-1). This has resulted in the scarcity of qualified coaches available to the national players as currently only two coaches, Asif Khan and M Faraz, are working with the federation.