British council hold sports festival to mark olympic countdown

Wednesday marked exactly 365 days from the 2012 London Olympics and the British Council Pakistan celebrated the occasion by holding a sports festival with various sports celebrities from across the country.

Also present were children from various local schools invited over as part of the British Council’s International Inspiration project, which is all about getting young people interested in sports.

The event was also attended by Provincial Minister of Education and Literacy, Sindh, Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq who signed an MoU with British Council Pakistan Director David Martin for making sports activities a necessary requirement in all schools here.

Meanwhile, there were plenty of opportunities to gather inspiration from such as the impressive stamp collection that among other things also boasted of sports stamps issued from the UK and the rest of the world, a nice big ground for participating in various sports and games themselves besides watching the matches between formal and current professionals from Pakistan and Europe on the other ground right next to it.

That was also the ground that changed to suit the games played on it every now and then. From serving as a rugby field, it converted into a cricket ground, followed by a football ground and then the hockey field.

It was here that the Pakistan football team comprising several international club players beat the German team 4-1 for the first time in history.

Later, the Habib Public School boys took on the Pakistan hockey team of Flying Horse Samiullah, Wasim Feroz, Sohail Abbas, Qamar Ibrahim, Adnan Ashraf and goalkeeper Abuzar in a friendly hockey match that was also watched by former Test cricketers Hanif Mohammad and Shoaib Mohammad. The Pakistan team beat the boys easily.

The music selected for the occasion too added to the electric atmosphere with the 1992 World Cup song “Who’ll rule the world?” playing in the background during the cricket match, Right Said Fred’s “Stand up for the champions” in the Hall of Fame and “The final countdown” by Europe reminding everyone present of the countdown to the Olympics.

The stamp collection on display in the main building belonged to Sindh Sports Minister Dr Mohammad Ali Shah, who had it flown all the way from his home in England.

“My collection has the largest (issued by Hungary) and the smallest (issued by South Africa) stamp of the world along with stamps worth five thousand to 17 thousand pounds including the first three stamps issued by the British government in the 1800s and many commemorative sports stamps,” said the sports minister who has been collecting stamps since 1957.

But the ones that captured the children’s attention were the sports stamps that included the one issued on the occasion of the 1948 Olympics and the father of cricket W.G. Grace stamps.

“You will also notice that the stamps issued from England don’t carry the country’s name. Britain happens to be the only country in the world that doesn’t put its name on its stamps because they are after all the ones who started this way of post paid mail in the first place,” he explained.

Then there was the Olympic Hall of Fame celebrating the inspiring achievements of Pakistani and British Olympians. Thus hockey greats
Islahuddin, Hasan Sardar, Samiullah, boxer Hussain Shah and special athlete Haider Ali shared a wall with Daley Thomson, Rebecca Adlington, Goldie Sayers, Sir Steven Geoffrey Redgrave and Sir Chris Hoy.

Celebrating the 2012 Olympics host city London, there was also a speakers’ corner like that at Hyde Park for the youngsters to speak their mind.

A wall in the Hall of Fame also gave a bit of Olympic history about the city as London first stood in as host city for the Games in place of Rome following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1908. London again stepped in at the last minute in 1948 to host the first Olympic Games after World War II. And now the much anticipated 2012 Games are expected to have four billion people tuning in to watch the opening ceremony alone.

Finally, a digital countdown that officially marked 365 days to London 2012 was started by squash legend Jahangir Khan, the chief guest at the festival’s closing ceremony

news covered by dawn sports