A Ghostly Silence: How a Dream to Revive Squash in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Became a Concrete Graveyard
Musarrat Ullah Jan – KikxNow Digital Creator
Five years ago, a promising vision germinated in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa: creating a new crop of squash champions. Drawn by giants such as
Jahangir and Jan Sher Khan, the Provincial Sports Directorate undertook a
scheme to construct eight modern squash courts. The intention was to establish
modern facilities in schools and colleges in Peshawar, providing a pipeline of
new talent and taking the pressure off established outlets.
But now, this dream is a haunting emptiness. The
multi-million-rupee venture has yielded nothing but a series of empty,
abandoned courts. The issue started with a total lack of openness. The contract
for the project was a bureaucratic maze, with a new company for every phase of
construction. This disorganized process led to low-quality, uneven
construction. A walk-through of these courts shows the dismal consequences:
peeling paint, cracked floors, and a general air of neglect.
Nowhere is this breakdown more pronounced than in Nave
Kalay, a village that used to produce two of Pakistan's greatest squash
players. A new court was constructed, but the school administration here can't
even afford to put the lights on. "We cannot operate the court," they
replied. "We have no budget for AC or electricity." It's a sad
irony—a venture designed to generate opportunity has, instead, provided an
expensive burden.
These courts are a testament to a flawed dream. They have no
trainers, no training schemes, and no vision for their future. The money, it
appears, was in abundance for building but vanished totally for maintenance.
After investing crores of rupees, there is not even a solitary new national
player to boast about.
The questions remain haunting like an echo in these vacant
courts: Who authorized this without taking advice from the very institutions it
was supposed to benefit? Who permitted this financial disaster to occur? These
courts are no longer merely "stone boxes"—they are also a strong
indicator of a national opportunity lost, and a public trust broken.
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