Wednesday turned out to be a historic day for sports in Pakistan as its cricket team registered a historic win against South Africa but its football federation was suspended by FIFA over interference of third-party.
Global football governing body FIFA suspended Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) with immediate effect.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, FIFA said, “This situation was prompted by the recent hostile takeover of the PFF headquarters in Lahore by a group of protestors and an alleged decision by certain individuals to remove the FIFA-appointed normalization committee of the PFF led by Haroon Malik and to hand over the leadership of the PFF to Syed Ashfaq Hussain Shah”.
Earlier, the global football governing body had warned PFF to settle its affairs.
However, things did not change as the government and related ministers kept themselves at bay from the issue.
Not only Pakistan’s Women’s Football team captain is disappointed but the depressing circumstances made cricket players and other celebrities upset too.
Embarrassed and ashamed. https://t.co/RshH3sQYdd
— Hajra Khan (@hajrakn) April 7, 2021
– We need to keep our egos on a side, what ever the reason maybe FIFA banning Pakistan is sad news this shouldn’t have happened, must say its a dark day for our fellow professional athletes and budding talent. The country is above everything… #FIFABan #Pakistan
— Shoaib Malik 🇵🇰 (@realshoaibmalik) April 7, 2021
PFF had been suspended previously from October 2017 to March 2018 over the same interference issue when the Supreme Court (SC) appointed an administrator to oversee affairs after controversial elections of the federation.
In September 2019, FIFA appointed a normalization committee that was running the affairs before PFF was overtaken.
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Cricket
Amidst disappointment-filled air, Pakistan registered a win against South Africa in the ODI series on its soil after 2013.
Pakistan set a target of 321 and Proteas were all out on 292 runs.
In the third match, Pakistani opener Fakhar Zaman scored second consecutive century and made 101 runs.
Captain Babar Azam remained unlucky as he fell short of 6 runs and returned to the pavilion on 94 off 82 balls.
Muhammad Nawaz and Shaheen Afridi bagged three wickets each.
Fakhar Zaman was named man of the match and man of the series.