ISLAMABAD - International badminton coach Raziuddin has launched first ever badminton academy Pakistan Badminton Foundation in a colorful ceremony held at a local hotel on Monday.
Speaking at the occasion, Razi said: “I had long desire to establish a world-class badminton academy in Pakistan and I had been working on this project from last five years. Now, I finally managed to announce this dream project.”
He said it was his firm belief Pakistan was blessed with natural talent in almost all the sporting fields. “We had managed to win the French Open in badminton, reached the finals of the International Games in China in 1976, we had beaten Korea 3-1 and Japan 3-0, but now Pakistan is nowhere in the international badminton map, as Pakistan is banned by International Badminton Federation (IBF) for running parallel bodies, but it is my promise I will give the country world class player in two year time.”
“I have long experience of coaching in England as I first became international coach then took over the reins of Pakistan coaching. I will establish academies in almost all the major cities and we will conduct trials in September. I have managed to arrange funds to run the academy where jobs will be provided to players, coaches, umpires and other technical staff and the entire system will be run on transparent manner. We don’t want to enter war of words but just want to concentrate on the task of grooming players and get desired results in a specific period of time,” he added.
Razi said he had contacts and he would use all his sources to give exposure to players. “Male players only have 10 percent of facilities but the ratio is far below when it comes to female players. I will provide equal opportunities to male and female players and my academy is unique in a way that I have also taken good care on Para badminton players. Separate training classes will be held for them and we will introduce wheel-chair badminton events for special players.”
Razi said players worked really hard but they didn’t have any direction. Rizwan Azam had almost qualified for the Beijing Olympics, as he was world number 52 in doubles rankings as top 50 ranked players participate in the Olympics.
Razi said this game could be at par with other sports especially cricket if sponsors spare some money. “Our slogan is ‘Badminton for Peace’ and we will work to portray soft image of the country at international level.”
“We will start training camps for U-17 and U-19 age groups and we will not only rely on B forms but also conduct bone age tests to verify their ages.”
“A total of 177 countries are affiliated with World Badminton Federation, although Pakistan became the WBF member in 1953, but now we are nowhere near to where we were once. We will work on lifting the international ban from Pakistan. We have only one international player in shape of Tariq Wadood, one international coach Raziuddin and one international umpire Nadeem Ishaq. We will try to produce maximum players, coaches and umpires who will represent Pakistan internationally,” Razi concluded.