LAHORE - The Malik Mehdi Hussain Memorial All Pakistan Basketball Gold Cup 2016 will commence today (Sunday) here at the Rangers Headquarters basketball courts.

This was announced by Maj Gen (R) Hussain Mehdi during a press conference held here on Saturday. Pakistan Basketball Federation (PBF) secretary Khalid Bashir and other officials were also present on the occasion. “It will be the first and one of the best national level events of this year which will attract a great number of youth and provide them a platform to excel at the higher level.”

He said that as many as 16 teams had been featuring in the eight-day tournament. “There are four pools and in the first four days, the matches will be played on league system. After that, the matches will be played under cris-cross method while the classification match and the final will be played on the last day of the event.”

“The participating 16 teams are Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force, Rangers, Police, Higher Education Commission, Wapda, Railways, Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi, Peshawar, Sargodha, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Kohat and Hazara,” he added.

Terming this tournament a first step towards revival of this game, Maj Gen (R) Hussain Mehdi said that the government had no focus on sports that’s why the games had been declining in the country. “But we have decided to uplift basketball and for this, we are ready to hold maximum basketball events and we have also made this tournament a part of annual calendar of Pakistan Basketball Federation.”