In the USA, The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a voluntary association of about 1,200 colleges and universities, athletic conferences and sports organizations devoted to the sound administration of intercollegiate athletics. They cater anywhere from baseball to water polo and football to field hockey.
It would really help if such an organization is set up in Pakistan where colleges and universities compete with each other in sports such as Cricket. Top players can then represent their city teams and eventually the national side.
This will also help players complete their education while playing serious cricket that is being watched by city and national selectors.
PS. I am assuming city cricket will take over departmental cricket structure by the time this new NCAA style organization is built.
hell yeah... and i guess then we can have ESPN...FOX n all in Pakistan if public was interested in some domestic cricket or some other short competetive sports coz cricket takes up a whole day...
there are inter collegiate and inter university matches in pretty much every sport. I was in PAF college's teams and we had championships as well as friendlies. we had matches with other PAF colleges and local colleges in Karachi.
The colleges in Karachi which were affiliated with the local board and not fed board like PAF was, had championships for pretty much every popular sport.
I am not sure at the university level, I was at Uni of Karachi for a few months and was part of their team too but left before any chamionships.
Its not as organized as here, not even close. There is minimal training/coaching.. lack of facilities, encouragement, visibility can only keep teh true diehard fans. back then with the few universities and colleges that we had the league would have been kinda lame anyways. plus "students" found more extra curricular activities in being jamaati or psf thugs.
Now with a good number of colleges and unis a good collegiate sports league could eaily be formed.
One diff though is that the percentage of ppl who go to uni here vs pakistan is very diff. here you not only have the collegiate route but professional sports teams have smaller clubs affiliated with them which serve as talent farms.
i can see a good combo of uni-club teams serving as a talent pool for city teams which in turn are a pool for national teams.
Would it be worth people's time to play for city or club teams though?