Sport
The city has an array of stadiums and grounds to meet the needs of all the popular sports played in the country. Rawalpindi is home to some of the many recognized players in the history of Pakistani cricket and is known to produce high-quality fast-bowlers. The most notable of the lot is the maverick paceman Shoaib Akhtar, known as the Rawalpindi Express. Mohammad Aamir is another aspiring fast-bowler from Rawalpindi.
The Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, built in 1992, has a grass pitch, floodlights, and an initial capacity to hold 20,000 spectators. In mid-2008 plans to increase its capacity were made but lack of adequate funds, and later the attack on Sri Lankan cricket team lead to abandoning of the project . The home team are the, one-time T20 champion, Rawalpindi Rams who enjoy fervent support and a considerable following for their swash-buckling brand of cricket. Apart from the RCS, there are many other cricket grounds in the city, including, Pindi Club Ground (home to the Pindi Club), KRL Stadium, CMTSD Cricket stadium as well as the Attock Oil Refinery cricket ground.
There are stadiums for hockey such as the Army Hockey Stadium, Army Signals Hockey ground as well as the Noor Station Ground Dhoke Hassu. A full-fledged, international hockey stadium, to be named after the hockey great Shahnaz Sheikh, is under construction near Municipal Road and is expected to be completed in late 2012.
There are stadiums for football including the Municipal Football stadium and the Army Football ground as well. The COD sports complex houses admirable facilities for indoor games.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)