Sports infrastructure.

Pakistan needs a viable strategy to promote its athletes. Cricket attracts the most amount of private sector sponsorships. Hockey is only followed by a handful. Other sports including badminton, squash, billiards, swimming, volleyball, chess, javelin, shooting, sprinting, cycling, archery, artistic gymnastics, basketball, football, diving, judo, karate, rowing, weightlifting, taekwondo, tennis and table tennis must be promoted in Pakistan.

There is a multi-tier problem in this regard. Athletes do not learn about playing a sport in a week. They need continuous training. This training includes building stamina and physique, developing temperament and perseverance, enhancing reflex actions and endurance. Athletes need to develop skills relating to the cognitive and physical aspects. The ability to play according to the rules and to keep an eye on the competitor is part of cognition. To perform at the best of one's ability, and to endure the stress and pain is the physical part.

The Pakistan Sports Board needs to prepare an operational and strategic vision to promote sports in Pakistan. It must entail how it will select players interested in playing various sports and how to train them. A holistic strategy must be implemented with various stakeholders connected. At the highest level, the Pakistan Sports Board must devise a plan to identify talent (players) at the school, college, and university levels. It should create sub-committees to facilitate this plan. A sub-committee of 'Assessors' should be formed to identify and scrutinise sports talent. Assessors can hold trials in villages, cities, schools, colleges, universities, local clubs, etc. Once the talent is identified, it needs to be trained. A sub-committee of 'trainers' will facilitate the training-cognitive and physical. The sub-committee of 'evaluators' will judge the talent's performance. The talent will participate in local and national sports tournaments, a sort of mini-Olympics, hosted by the concerned governing bodies of...