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Pakistan’s WBC debut 20 years in the making
- Updated: September 23, 2016
NEW YORK — For manager Syed Fakhar Ali Shah, the fact that the Pakistan national baseball team is here, in New York, playing in the World Baseball Classic qualifying rounds, means everything.
In 1992, his father, Syed Khawar Shah, founded Pakistan Federation Baseball, the governing body of baseball in Pakistan. On Thursday, at the Brooklyn Cyclones’ stadium on Coney Island, Pakistan played its first World Baseball Classic game.
“We have been working for the last 20 years to promote baseball in Pakistan,” Shah said. “This one event is equal to the 20 years.”
World Baseball Classic coverage
Even as Pakistan lost, 10-0, to Brazil in the first game of the Brooklyn qualifier, which will determine the final country to make the 16-team field for the 2017 WBC, Shah watched proudly. The publicity from the tournament, he said — from mainstream media and the 28 players on his roster, via social media accounts and word-of-mouth when they return home — will have an enormous impact on spreading baseball in Pakistan.
“Each player is from a different area of Pakistan,” Shah said. “The word goes out.”
The Cyclones’ stadium is a new world for the Pakistan players, who don’t have maintained baseball fields in Pakistan, where the sport lacks infrastructure and is in the early stages of development. The Federation runs free clinics, but young players have to travel from far …
