Daily Times

Aalia Rasheed is a leading female sports journalist and analyst in Pakistan. She started off her career as a sports journalist in a time when the presence of women in sports was a rarity and was considered a social taboo. During her career as a sports journalist, she participated in a number of radio programs from Karachi center. Moreover, in her journalistic career, she covered several national and international matches and tournaments of cricket, hockey, squash and tennis.

In 1990, she became the first female anchor on national television (PTV) to conduct sports programs and won national awards for her remarkable efforts as well. As a solo presenter, Aalia covered live transmission of the Hockey World Cup from PTV center Lahore for 14 consecutive days in 1990. Aalia has written books on the achievements of Imran Khan and squash legend Jehangir Khan as well.

In an interview, Aalia discussed the challenges she had to face as a female sports journalist, especially at the beginning of her career, and she also told in length the problems plaguing the Pakistani cricket industry.

Aalia was a passionate reporter who preferred gathering her stories on-field. Nonetheless, she faced undue pressure as the society was not ready to accept her. She got strange responses and was mocked by many at various occasions. Since there was no concept of a female sports journalist, it was hard for Aalia to get acceptance in the field, which was strictly considered a male-only domain. Aalia contributed in two sports magazine published from Karachi titled, ‘Cricketer‘ and ‘Akhbar-E-Watan‘. In the late 80s, she also published her own magazine that went by the name, ‘All Rounder’.

“In the past, there was no concept of live telecast, and I along with my uncle used to listen to radio commentary of matches broadcasted from Australia and West Indies. The regular listening of commentary and playing cricket on streets with my cousins ignited a passion in me to become a sports journalist,” said Aalia.

Aalia further elaborated that it is very important for a woman to be goal oriented. My goal was to become a successful sports journalist and I achieved it. I love cricket and my focus was always on this genre. If you are focused, people also take you seriously. I remained steadfast, and eventually, things worked out for me.

Aalia, while talking about the challenges said that in those days if a man made a mistake, everybody ignored it, but when a female sports journalist made a mistake, she would get bashed for her lack of knowledge. To overcome this scenario, I sat with the coaches, ground staff, team management, and learned the traits of the art from the very people involved in cricket organization and management. I spent days with ground men to learn the behaviour of pitches also.

Talking about Pakistan Super League, Aalia said that the PSL is overall an attractive tournament. “I worked with Zaka Ashraf for PSL in 2012-13 as Director Media, but I observed a lot of non-serious behavior, so I quit. I give full credit to Mr. Najam Sethi for making PSL a reality. PSL is playing a great role in the promotion of cricket in Pakistan, and young players are also seen emerging from this tournament. The drawback we are facing is that we are focusing only on PSL and ignoring other domestic tournaments that need our attention. Even the senior players prefer PSL, and it has become a shortcut to secure a place in the national team. This shorter version has masked players’ fitness level and once they play in the longer version, they are exposed,” she said.

Speaking about domestic cricket, Aalia said that it is the backbone of our cricket, but we are not taking it seriously. Things are revolving around few faces like Haroon Rasheed, Shafiq Pap, and a few others. “We are not taking domestic cricket seriously. Our selectors are only focusing on matches which are aired on television. At the moment, PCB is making no investment in game development, on pitches, balls, ground, and infrastructure. PCB should bring international coaches in domestic cricket to improve the technique of our batsman who struggle a lot against moving ball,” she added.

She further elaborated, “We lack players who can build the innings, as youngsters nowadays are focusing more to play for gallery. World has players like Virat Kohli, Kumar Sangakara and Hashim Amla who know the art of innings building. We should train youngsters and aspiring cricketers the skills like innings building as well.”

“Our team should be a combination of young and experienced players and in this scenario; I think we should keep Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik in the loop until the 2019 world cup, to give balance and stability to the team.”

Talking about brining improvement in Pakistan’s domestic cricket, Aalia said, “We need centre of excellence in 8-10 major cities. Product needs to be developed from grass root level. Unfortunately, we are not concentrating on grass root level. I often say that we cannot wish for a mango by sowing banana. In nearly 60 years of domestic cricket, we are unable to decide what our domestic structure should be like. Whether it should be based on departmental cricket or regional cricket or a combination of both. Our system is corrupted and we need to eradicate that first. We get success on the heroic performance of the individual and then hide all the issues under the carpet after attaining that success. We lost a lot of one-day matches from 2013 onwards. In that period, more than 50 players were made part of the team but where are those players now. Too much chopping and changing will not help in team building. A player once selected should be given adequate opportunities to prove his determination. Selectors need to consider a player’s technique and temperament before selecting him, but unfortunately, our selectors miss many key elements when selecting raw talent for the national team.”

Talking further about domestic cricket, Aalia said that PCB should question the departments on why they don’t have their own grounds, physiotherapists, and trainers. “In my view, the ideal situation is that the departments which are part of domestic cricket should sponsor regional teams. It is regional cricket that brings interest. If departments sponsor them, then domestic cricket will become more interesting for players and the general public,” she said.

Aalia believes that we need to study the domestic structure of India as well. In India, first-class cricket is given a lot of importance. They focus on four-day matches. The Pakistan Cricket Board should learn from the example of Rahul Dravid and hire stars of the past as coaches in domestic cricket. We need to invest money at the domestic level in the training of youngsters.

Talking about the captaincy, Aalia added that Sarfraz is a good quality captain in a shorter format. “He is a brave person, but in my view, he might be under Coach Mickey Arthur. As a captain, he should take bold decisions and one of those decisions is to bat at higher number. He still needs time to learn the art of captaincy for test matches. I suggest PCB should hand the reigns of captaincy to Azhar Ali in test matches,” she said.

Talking about developing future leaders, Aalia commented, “I think we should develop local players just like Imaad Waseem is named captain by Karachi Kings whereas Fakhar Zaman and Ruman Raees are titled vice-captain by Lahore Qalandars and Islamabad United respectively. Captaincy is a process, it is a learning curve and combination of foreign and local captains in PSL is a good experience. Fakhar Zaman is learning a lot from Brendon Mccullam, and I am sure other youngsters will also learn from this experience.”

While recalling the good and worst periods of Pakistani cricket, Aalia said, “Imran Khan’s tenure form the mid-80s to early 90s was the best phase of Pakistani cricket. Imran Khan gelled the players together. His team lacked superstars, but that did not stop him from giving amazing results. For test cricket, the way Misbah-ul-Haq rebuilt the shattered team after the 2010 ball tampering incident was an amazing achievement. Misbah and Younus Khan along with youngsters, Azhar Ali and Asad Shafiq, worked tirelessly and took Pakistan cricket team to the no.1 spot in test cricket. MisbahulHaq in the last series of his career became the first Pakistan captain to win test series in West Indies. His services for Pakistan are commendable and will be remembered for a long time.”

Talking about the role of media, Aalia said, “I think media being a watchdog is responsible for highlighting the flaws. In my view, it is because of media that Karachi is hosting the final of Pakistan Super League and also the T20 series against West Indies. It is the media that kept stressing on the opinion that Karachi deserved to host the PSL final. This persistent discussion on the topic forced the provincial government to take up the matter with the PCB, and all of this helped in bringing the final to Karachi.

Aalia Rasheed is currently working as the media advisor to the Chairman of Lahore Qalandars. While highlighting the efforts of Lahore Qalandars, she informed that the coaches and management of Lahore Qalandars work determinedly throughout the year in search of players. They hunt players and then send them to Australia for training. Lahore Qalandars has become the first domestic team to go to Kashmir in search of players. They have unearthed Salman Irshad, a tall fast bowler from Kashmir and sent him to Australia for his training.

Aalia concluded by saying that we need to revive our nurseries as well. School cricket once served as a product line for our cricket, but now its importance has been overshadowed. It’s high time that we take a series of steps to revive school cricket around the country so that this very important segment of players’ development in early stages of their career is not ignored.

The writer is a publicist and an ardent sports follower. He can be reached at kzk1972@gmail.com and tweets @KhurramZiaKhan. He blogs at http://www.karachichronicle.com