LAHORE: Pakistan interim head coach Saqlain Mushtaq has shown no interest to continue his services with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Dawn learnt from well-placed sources on Tuesday. According to the sources, the former off-spinner was appointed as the interim head coach only for the ICC T20 World Cup, which was held in the United Arab Emirates last year., It was expected that Saqlain, who was serving as the Head of International Players Development at the National High-Performance Centre here, would be offered a permanent role by the PCB but that has not happened yet. Some reports also stated that he has…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
Australian cricketers are on edge barely a month before their first tour of Pakistan in 24 years amid an uptick in terror attacks in the Asian nation, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Wednesday. “We’re all toey about it,” a source close to the team told the newspaper, using an informal Australian term for being anxious or worried. Australia are scheduled to play three tests, three one-day internationals and one Twenty20 match in Pakistan starting March 3. Selector George Bailey told reporters on Wednesday that security arrangements would be “very, very robust and very, very thorough”. “I believe the boards are still…
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Remember this old adage? That’s how a teeny-tiny minority of fans overcome with nostalgia might feel about Umar Akmal. A few years ago, he was the problem child of Pakistan cricket that almost everyone wanted to see the back of. And a few years before that, he was the hottest young batting talent in not just Pakistan but all of cricket. What happened in between were loads and loads of moronic events, of which we don’t need to tell and you don’t need to be told. Just know that he has a separate subhead…
KARACHI: Trading on the stock exchange began on a positive note on Tuesday after the central bank’s decision to keep the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 9.75 per cent. The market stayed in the green zone with cement stocks remaining in the limelight on the expectation of high earnings in the upcoming results’ season, according to Arif Habib Ltd. However, an alarming rise in the number of Covid-19 cases and mounting international oil prices led investors to book profit in the last trading hour. As a result, the benchmark index lost 36.14 points or 0.08 per cent from a day…
LAHORE: To the concern of other provinces, Sindh continues to report exceptional water losses between Taunsa and Guddu during the ongoing Rabi season as it refuses to allow observation of real water flows by other federating units. Data available with the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) shows that Sindh’s irrigation authorities reported on an average 35.15 per cent water loss between Taunsa and Panjnad barrages (last head works on Indus and Chenab rivers, respectively) in Punjab, and downstream Guddu barrage in Sindh during the first 20 days of January this year. The minimum reported loss was 6pc reported on Jan…
LAHORE: In a major development, Pakistan Railways Freight Transportation Company’s (PRFTC) chief executive officer Jawaid Siddiqi has resigned from the office, serving a one-month notice on the department. Mr Siddiqi joined the PRFTC in July last year. Sources held “typical bureaucratic behaviour” as responsible for the problems that forced the officer to resign. “As far as I know Mr Siddiqi is a thorough professional having adequate capacity to head the PRFTC — a subsidiary of the PR — and increase the declining freight revenue of the department. But, unfortunately, he has quit due to PR’s decades-old obsolete system he found…
ISLAMABAD: The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has initiated an inquiry into the suspected cartelisation by primary dealers (PDs) in the recent auctions of Market Treasury Bills (T-bills) carried out by the government. A preliminary probe was undertaken due to various concerns raised with respect to the significant rise in the yields for all tenors including 3-, 6- and 12-month T-bills. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in its Monetary Policy Statement issued on December 14 also termed the rise in yields unwarranted. Concerns were also expressed that since the government could no longer borrow directly from the SBP it…
ISLAMABAD: The government on Tuesday approved the transaction structure and project proposal for the construction and operation of Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) on public-private mode at an estimated cost of about Rs220bn. Under the transaction structure approved by the board of Public-Private Partnership Authority (P3A), the private sector will finance, develop and run the project on commercial lines. The meeting of the P3A board was presided over by Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar. The sources said the transaction structure proposed by the consultants/transaction advisers envisaged about Rs533bn government subsidy over the 33-year project life for electricity and major operation…
The term Wordle might’ve crossed your path recently, especially if you’re an avid Twitter user. Our feeds are sprinkled with colourful building blocks, forming a square shape. Users are posting their scores that may appear like coded language for those unaware of the game but we’re here to decode the mystery. Wordle is a guessing game in which you guess a five-letter word. The same word is guessed by players across the world and a new game is uploaded every day. The game has successfully reeled in a lot of players, including our very own Malala. The rules of the…
BALTIMORE (US): Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, designed to give the world an unprecedented glimpse of infant galaxies in the early stages of the universe, arrived at its gravitational parking spot in orbit around the sun on Monday, nearly 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. With a final five-minute, course-correcting thrust of its onboard rocket, Webb reached its destination at a position of gravitational equilibrium known as the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, arriving one month after launch. The thruster was activated by mission control engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, with radio signals confirming Webb…
