ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has inducted former cricket greats Inzamam-ul-Haq, Misbah-ul-Haq, Mushtaq Mohammad and Saeed Anwar in its Hall of Fame, who join the likes of Abdul Qadir, AH Kardar, Fazal Mahmood, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Zaheer Abbas in the illustrious group.
Inzamam played international cricket from 1991 to 2007 and was a member of Pakistan’s 1992 World Cup-winning team, while Misbah, who represented Pakistan from 2001 to 2017, was part of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2009 winning squad and guided the team to the No.1 spot in the ICC Test Team Rankings in 2016.
Mushtaq played for Pakistan from 1959 to 1979 and captained the team to its first-ever Test win in Australia in 1977, featured in inaugural ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 1975 in England before coaching the Pakistan side to the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 1999 final – also in England. Saeed Anwar represented Pakistan from 1989 to 2003, amassing a total of 31 centuries and 68 half-centuries, including three centuries and three half-centuries across the 1996, 1999 and 2003 World Cups.
The four icons of the game were inducted following a voting process, which was participated in by Akram, Zaheer, former Pakistan captain Azhar Ali, former Pakistani women cricketers Bismah Maroof and Nain Abidi, and journalists Majid Bhatti, Mohi Shah, Mohammad Yaqoob, Nauman Niaz, Sawera Pasha and Zahid Maqsood.
“On behalf of the Pakistan Cricket Board, I extend heartfelt congratulations to these four cricketing legends on their well-deserved inductions into the PCB Hall of Fame,” PCB Chairman Mohsin Naqvi said in a statement.
“This honor represents a tribute to their outstanding contributions to Pakistan cricket and to the global game.”
The four stalwarts will be formally inducted into the PCB Hall of Fame during the course of the year when they will be presented with commemorative caps and specially-designed plaques, according to the PCB.
Inzamam said he was “deeply honored” to be inducted into the PCB Hall of Fame.
“My journey as a professional cricketer, representing Pakistan on the world stage for nearly 16 years,” he said in comments shared by the PCB.
“I owe immense gratitude to my fellow cricketers, dedicated support staff and my family, without whom this journey would not have been possible. Representing Pakistan during an era with such high-caliber players was a privilege and their influence played a vital role in my growth and development as a batter.”
In his statement, Misbah said that representing Pakistan was an “absolute privilege” and this recognition by the Pakistan Cricket Board served as the “perfect crowning achievement” of his journey.
“Being acknowledged by your parent organization, alongside the appreciation of cricketing experts and fellow players is both gratifying and fulfilling,” he said.
“It is a testament to the dedication, relentless effort and sacrifices that went into meeting the highest standards of international cricket and translating those preparations into memorable performances.”
Mushtaq said that to be honored and recognized 45 years after playing his last match for Pakistan was “truly humbling” for him.
“Being part of the Pakistan cricket team during its formative years was both exciting and rewarding,” he said. “I feel privileged to have played alongside and against some of the most outstanding cricketers and thorough gentlemen, who played hard while always upholding the true spirit of the game.”
Anwar, who struck three successive ODI centuries in Sharjah and scored 194 against India in Chennai to break Viv Richards’ long-standing record for the highest individual score in ODIs, said he was “deeply grateful” to the panel for inducting him into the PCB Hall of Fame.
“My journey had its challenges, but it was a privilege to face them head-on. Each match I played for Pakistan holds a special place in my heart, though missing out on the ICC Cricket World Cup 1992 remains a regret,” he said.
“This journey, filled with triumphs and lessons, wouldn’t have been complete without the overwhelming support of our fans and the camaraderie of my teammates.”
Pakistan Cricket Board inducts Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar and others in its Hall of Fame
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Pakistan Cricket Board inducts Inzamam-ul-Haq, Saeed Anwar and others in its Hall of Fame
- Inzamam was a member of Pakistan’s 1992 World Cup-winning team, while Misbah was part of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2009 winning squad
- Mushtaq captained the team to first-ever Test win in Australia in 1977, while Anwar scored 194 against India to break Viv Richards’ record
Pakistan says Syria needs ‘credible political transition,’ condemns Israeli incursions and airstrikes
- After fall of Bashar Assad regime, Israel expanded occupation of Syrian Golan Heights by seizing demilitarized buffer zone
- Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites and assets across Syria, including fighter jets, missile and air defense systems
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday condemned Israel’s “continued and repeated” incursions and airstrikes in Syria, saying durable peace in the Middle Eastern state required a credible political transition and an inclusive government.
Israel capitalized last December on the fall of the long regime of Bashar Assad to bolster its military foothold in Syria. It now controls a 400-square-km demilitarized buffer zone, supports the Druze minority and is opposed to the Syrian leadership.
Syria’s foreign ministry on Tuesday condemned Israeli strikes on the southwestern city of Daraa, which it said had killed and injured civilians. The strikes a day earlier killed at least three people and injured 19 others, the Syrian civil defense group, known as the White Helmets, said.
The Israeli army confirmed the strikes, the latest in a string of attacks targeting Syria’s military infrastructure since rebels toppled Assad. Israel said it targeted military headquarters and sites containing weapons and equipment.
“Israel’s continued and repeated incursions and airstrikes into the Syrian territory, continued violation of 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement and its declared intent for an indefinite presence and full demilitarization of Syria are unacceptable, constitute latent violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and undermine international law and regional stability,” the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement.
“A durable peace in Syria hinges on a credible political transition, national unity and reconciliation and inclusive governance.”
The Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria, which was signed on May 31, 1974, provided for the continuation of the ceasefire already in effect and for the separation of opposing parties by a UN Peacekeeping Force.
After the fall of Assad, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who led anti-regime forces to oust Assad, was declared president for a transitional period in late January. Israel says it will not tolerate what it describes as an Islamist militant presence in southern Syria and has sent its troops into Syria’s border zone.
Syria’s leadership has said it does not intend to open a front against Israel.
Indian fisherman hangs himself in Pakistan prison amid delayed repatriation
- Indian and Pakistani fishermen are frequently detained for straying into each other’s territorial waters
- Jail authorities in Pakistan say Gaurav’s release was delayed due to procedural reasons on Indian side
KARACHI: An Indian fisherman has died by suicide in a Karachi prison, a senior Pakistani jail official said on Wednesday, as the incident highlighted the plight of detainees caught in the tangle of strained India-Pakistan relations.
Indian and Pakistani fishermen are routinely detained by both countries’ maritime agencies for allegedly entering each other’s territorial waters. The poorly defined maritime boundary in the Arabian Sea, coupled with the limited navigational capabilities of many fishing boats, frequently leads to unintentional crossings.
According to Pakistani prison authorities, Gaurav, son of Ram Anand, hanged himself in the prison’s washroom on Tuesday night.
“He went to the washroom under the pretext of urinating and hanged himself with his drawstring,” Qazi Nazeer Ahmed, Inspector General of Prison Police in Pakistan’s Sindh province, told Arab News.
Malir Prison, where Gaurav took his own life, has come under scrutiny in recent years over the deaths of several detainees due to health complications.
Last month, a prisoner named Babu Kana died due to health issues, while in 2023, two Indian fishermen — Balo Jetha and Soma Deva — died after their health deteriorated during incarceration.
Ahmed said Gaurav was apparently suffering from “severe depression,” which pushed him to take the extreme step of ending his life.
“His sentence was completed, but the process from the Indian side [for his release] was not finalized,” he continued. “Fellow prisoners reported that Gaurav’s behavior did not indicate he would commit suicide, but he was depressed.”
Arab News reached out to the Indian High Commission, where officials declined to comment immediately, saying they would first speak to Pakistani authorities.
Arshad Shah, Superintendent of Malir Jail, said Gaurav had been remanded to the Karachi prison on February 17, 2022.
“The duty doctor examined him before pronouncing him dead,” he told Arab News, adding the body had been handed over to the Edhi Foundation for repatriation.
Human rights activists on both sides of the border have long called for a faster process for the release of fishermen, who commit no crime but mistakenly cross invisible boundaries at sea and end up in jail, while their families suffer back home.
“According to our records, 216 Indian fishermen are still languishing in Pakistani jails, while 81 Pakistani fishermen are imprisoned in India,” Jatin Desai, an Indian rights activist, said, adding hundreds of fishermen remained in prison on both sides of the border.
However, the IG prison maintained Indian nationals were treated well in jail, adding that Pakistani authorities did not delay their release once legal formalities were completed.
“This is why prisoners are regularly released and returned to their country,” he added. “We regret that Gaurav could not reunite with his family back in India.”
Pakistan’s Parsi community dwindles as young migrate
- Once the Parsi community in Pakistan had as many as 15,000-20,000 people
- Today, numbers hover around 900 people in Karachi, few dozen more elsewhere in Pakistan
KARACHI: From a gated community for her Zoroastrian faith in Pakistan’s megacity Karachi, 22-year-old Elisha Amra has waved goodbye to many friends migrating abroad as the ancient Parsi community dwindles.
Soon the film student hopes to join them — becoming one more loss to Pakistan’s aging Zoroastrian Parsi people, a community who trace their roots back to Persian refugees from today’s Iran more than a millennium ago.
“My plan is to go abroad,” Amra said, saying she wants to study for a master’s degree in a country without the restrictions of a conservative Muslim-majority society.
“I want to be able to freely express myself,” she added.
Zoroastrianism, founded by the prophet Zarathustra, was the predominant religion of the ancient Persian empire, until the rise of Islam with the Arab conquests of the seventh century.
Once the Parsi community in Pakistan had as many as 15,000-20,000 people, said Dinshaw Behram Avari, the head of one of the most prominent Parsi families.
Today, numbers hover around 900 people in Karachi and a few dozen more elsewhere in Pakistan, according to community leaders, many staying together in compounds like where Amra lives.
She acknowledges her life is more comfortable than many in Pakistan — the Parsis are in general an affluent and highly educated community.
But says she wants to escape the daily challenges that beset the city of some 20 million people — ranging from power cuts, water shortages and patchy Internet to violent street crime.
“I’d rather have a life where I feel safe, and I feel happy and satisfied,” she said.
Zubin Patel, 27, a Parsi working in e-commerce in Karachi, has seen more than two dozen Parsi friends leave Karachi for abroad in the past three years.
“More than 20-25 of my friends were living in Karachi, they all started migrating,” he said.
That is not unique to Parsis — many young and skilled Pakistanis want to find jobs abroad to escape a country wracked with political uncertainty and security challenges, a struggling economy and woeful infrastructure.
The number of highly skilled Pakistanis who left for jobs abroad more than doubled according to the latest figures from the Pakistan Economic Survey — from 20,865 in 2022, to 45,687 in 2023.
Parsis are struggling to adjust in a fast-changing world.
The religion, considered among the oldest in the world, forbids conversion and mixed marriages are frowned upon.
“There is a better chance to find a Zoroastrian partner in Canada, Australia, UK and America than in Pakistan,” said Avari, who heads of a chain of hotels.
He points out that Parsi population of Toronto is some 10 times greater than Karachi.
Avari, 57, said that a wave of Parsis left Pakistan during the hard-line military rule of Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s, who enforced a program of Islamization.
Since then, militant violence has targeted religious minorities, and while Parsis say they have not been targeted, they remain wary.
He suggested the community’s high levels of education and Western outlook to life meant many eyed a future abroad, while for those who do stay, family size is shrinking.
“Couples are more interested today in looking after their career; they are not interested in family,” he said.
“When they do get married, they will have one child — and one child is not enough to make a positive impact on the population.”
Parsi members were among the pioneers of the shipping and hospitality industries in Karachi, and the city’s colonial-era historic district is dotted with Parsi buildings including hospitals and schools.
But as the community declines, many buildings have crumbled, with as many as half the homes in elegant tree-lined streets of the century-old Sohrab Katrak Parsi Colony lying abandoned.
For many among the younger generation, the only pull left keeping them in Pakistan is their aging relatives.
Patel, the e-commerce worker, said he would leave if he could.
“It would be a difficult decision,” he said. “But if I have an opportunity which would give my parents ... a healthy lifestyle, then I’d obviously go for it.”
Amra, who visits her 76-year-old grandfather almost daily, worries that her parents will be alone when she leaves.
“You have to figure out a way, eventually, to either bring them to you or come back,” she said.
Gunmen kill five commuters traveling to Karachi in Pakistan’s volatile southwest
- The incident happened near Pasni, Balochistan, where armed men offboarded Punjabi passengers on a highway
- No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though BLA usually launches such attacks
QUETTA: At least five passengers belonging to Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province were forcibly offboarded from passenger buses heading to Karachi from Gwadar on Wednesday after gunmen checked their identity cards and killed them near Pakistan’s coastal town of Pasni, a senior government official confirmed.
This is not the first time commuters from Punjab have been targeted in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan province, which shares porous borders with Iran and Afghanistan and has experienced a low-scale insurgency by Baloch separatist groups against the Pakistani state.
Baloch nationalists have long accused the Pakistani government and the country’s most prosperous Punjab province of monopolizing profits from Balochistan’s abundant natural resources, saying it has led to their political marginalization and economic exploitation.
Pakistani administrations have denied these allegations, however, citing several development initiatives launched in the province to improve local living conditions.
“Armed men stopped buses at the coastal highway near Kalmat, Pasni, and forcibly removed six passengers after checking their ID cards,” Moheem Khan Gichki, Assistant Commissioner Pasni, told Arab News over the phone.
“Five Punjab-based travelers who were traveling to Karachi from Gwadar were killed in the attack and one sustained injuries,” he continued. “The attackers also set one trawler and one vehicle on fire before escaping from the area.”
The coastal town of Gwadar, located on the shore of the Arabian Sea, is the heart of Pakistan and China’s multibillion-dollar development project called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest killings of the Punjab-based commuters, though suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Baloch separatist group Baloch Liberation Army, which has previously launched similar attacks on passenger buses on different highways of the volatile province.
In February, seven Punjab-based passengers were killed after the ethnic separatist group stopped Punjab-bound passenger buses in Barkhan district.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed sorrow in a statement issued by his office over the death of the commuters in the attack.
“Subversive elements are enemies of peace and development in Balochistan,” he said. “Cowardly attacks by such elements on innocent people clearly reflect their barbarity.”
Sharif also applauded the actions of the security forces and law enforcement agencies against anti-state groups while ordering an investigation into the incident to identify the perpetrators of the attack and bring them to justice.
Pakistan dismisses UN experts’ statement calling for release of Baloch activists
- UN experts raised concerns over ‘the used of excessive force’ against ‘peaceful protesters’ in Balochistan
- Pakistan calls them ‘active participants in a broader campaign of lawlessness and violence’ in response
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign office on Wednesday dismissed a statement issued by United Nations experts demanding the release of Baloch activists arrested during a crackdown on protests in the southwestern Balochistan province, maintaining that the statement lacked “balance and proportionality.”
The arrests came days after the separatist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) targeted a passenger train in the mountainous Bolan region on March 11, taking hundreds of hostages. The siege, which lasted for about 36 hours, ended after a military operation that killed 33 militants. The BLA attack also claimed the lives of over 30 civilians and security personnel and was one of the deadliest train assaults in the country’s history.
According to official statements, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), which has long campaigned for the rights of the ethnic Baloch community, initiated a protest seeking the recovery of the bodies of militants who targeted the passenger train. Subsequently, the BYC announced the arrest of its top leader, Dr. Mahrang Baloch, from a sit-in in Quetta where, according to the group, she and her colleagues were protesting with the bodies of three activists killed during clashes with the police.
The UN experts described these protests as “peaceful,” raising concern over “the use of excessive force” by the state against the protesters along with their subsequent disappearance.
“We have taken note of the press release issued by certain UN experts, which appears to be based on selective and unverified media reports,” the foreign office said in its statement. “It is imperative that public statements of this nature adhere to principles of objectivity, avoid selective criticism, reflect factual accuracy, and acknowledge the full context of the situation.”
“Regrettably, these comments lack balance and proportionality, downplaying civilian casualties inflicted by terrorist attacks while disregarding the crimes committed by miscreants who deliberately disrupt public services, obstruct freedom of movement, and create an atmosphere of insecurity,” it added.
The foreign office noted any assessment of these events should recognize that “these elements are not mere protesters but active participants in a broader campaign of lawlessness and violence.”
It maintained this was evident from the storming of the District Hospital in Quetta, where protesters “forcibly seized the bodies of terrorists” killed during the train hostage rescue operation.
“International human rights law unequivocally prohibits individuals, entities, or groups from weaponizing rights to infringe upon the rights and security of others,” the statement continued. “It also firmly upholds the right of sovereign States to take lawful and necessary action to maintain public order and ensure the safety of their citizens.”
Earlier, the UN experts had said they had been monitoring with concern reports of alleged arrests and enforced disappearances of Baloch activists over the past number of months along with the violent incidents in the past few days.
“Once again we see the use of excessive force as a first response to peaceful protests,” they noted. “We understand the deeply traumatic impact of the 11 March terrorist attack, and we express our deepest sympathy to the victims of this attack, yet a response which relies on arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and violent crackdowns on freedom of assembly cannot alleviate that trauma.”
The foreign office said Pakistan has an open and constructive dialogue with UN Special Procedures Mandate Holders and will continue its engagement based on principles of mutual respect, objectivity, and adherence to facts.
