Pak athletes weren't given India visas in 2019: Shuttler Mahoor Shahzad urges for improved Indo-Pak relations

India completely decimated Pakistan in the mixed-team badminton event at the 2022 Commonwealth Games on Friday. Pakistan's Mahoor Shahzad came across India's PV Sindhu and was handed a massive defeat by a scoreline of 21-7, 21-6. After the game, Mahoor admitted the gulf in class between the players of the two countries.

Speaking to India Today, Mahoor didn't shy away from lauding India as one of the best teams in the world. India are also the defending Commonwealth Games champions, having lifted the title in the Gold Coast Games.

“India is one of the best teams in the world and they were the champions of the Commonwealth Games last time around, so you get to learn a lot from after playing against one of the world’s top teams.

I will try to implement the learnings from the match in our training in the future,” she said.

About Sindhu, Mahoor said that she aspires to learn from the Indian shuttler having witnessed the variety of shots in her game first-hand now.

“PV Sindhu is a former world champion and she has won the silver medal in the Olympics as well. She is quite deceptive with her drop shots and her lobs her quite quick also. She has a lot of variety in her game and I would like to incorporate that as well,” she talked about the learning experience.

The Pakistani shuttler lamented her country's ability to give world class facilities to its athletes. With Pakistan facing going through an economic crisis, Mahoor said that the country's government is more focussed on other issues than building a strong sporting culture.

“We don’t have any international level training facility in Pakistan, while in India you have a lot of international academies across several cities. So, Pakistan does not really have a strong sporting culture and the majority of the sporting scene is dominated by cricket. There is not a lot of awareness of badminton as well. The training that we do is on our own as well,” the player talked about the status of sporting culture in Pakistan.

“Our country is facing an economic crisis that's why there’s no focus on sports. The government is focused on getting poor people out of poverty and hopefully when the country is out of the trouble, the focus will be on sports too,” she further added.

To wrap it up, Mahoor asserted the importance of better political relations between India and Pakistan, suggesting such a scenario would help the athletes of both countries. She also pointed out a few athletes wanted to come to India in 2019 but couldn't because of visa issues.

“Both governments should improve their relations. In 2019, a few players wanted to go to India for training, but were not given VISA,” she concluded.