KARACHI: The National Rifle Association of Pakistan (NRAP) will send Usman Chand to Asian Shooting Championship in India as it has decided to give opportunities to new talented shooters.
Secretary NRAP Javed Lodhi said this before leaving for the London Olympics while talking to ‘The News’.
He said a lot of people have now started taking interest in the game as Pakistan has regularly been making berths in the sport at Olympics. “Usman is a very talented player from Sialkot. We have decided to send him to take part in the 2nd Asian Shooting Championship that is to be held in Patiala in India from November 28 to December 9,” he said.
He added that the aim of giving him opportunities is to create replacements for the seniors.
He further said a team of four or five players would be sent to the Grand Prix Shotgun to be held in Tehran from September 6-14. “In October we plan to hold national shooting championship in Pakistan, and in case that gets delayed we will send six or seven players to Grand Prix Rifle and Pistol event in Tehran from October 19-24,” said the secretary.
A junior team would be sent for Junior Air Gun Championship to be held in China in November.
“Many new players, aged between 24 and 26, are showing keen interest in the game and they have got quite a talent for the sport. We are also investing in children to make this game popular in the country,” he said.
Talking about Olympics 2012, he said they are expecting good results from Khurrum Inam, who has been given a wild card entry in skeet category.
Since Admiral M Asif Sandila has taken charge of the association as its president, they have started taking measures to popularise the sport. This year NRAP started training programmes in more than 40 educational institutions across the country, including Government College Lahore, University of Punjab and Women University Peshawar.
The game of shooting has developed a lot in India, as their 11 players are participating in Olympics 2012. “They (Indians) know that they can’t beat Europe in athletics, so they have excelled a lot in non-traditional sports like shooting,” Javed told this scribe sometime back, adding that this is evident by the fact that this year Pakistan had 18 shooters with Minimum Qualifying Score (MQS) while India had 137.
According to Javed, India has Rs500 million in annual budget for this game and Iran $5 million budget, but NRAP receives annual grant of only Rs1.2 million, out of which Rs0.4 million is spent on paying fees to international bodies. “The amount we need to spend on the preparation of one shooter is Rs5 million a year,” he said.
