England-Pak XI comprising players from London College of Business Management and Technology (LCMBIT) defeated Government College University (GCU) Cricket team by 25 runs in a Twenty20 match on Saturday. The match was staged under the banner of the Punjab International Sports Festival (PISF) 2014. Provincial Minister for Sports and Education Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan and Director General Sports Board Punjab (SBP) Usman Anwar were the guests of honour on the occasion.
Rana Mashhood said that negative propaganda against the healthy activities of Punjab Youth Festival (PYF) is an attempt to defame the country. He said: "The PYF has provided a platform to Pakistani youth to showcase their talent and portray a softer image of the country across the globe. It has also conveyed a positive message to the entire world that Pakistan is a safe country to hold all kinds of sports activities in a befitting manner."
To a query regarding the news item about Guinness World Record (GWR), the Minister said that the GWR is an independent institution and one could see the agreement signed between Punjab Government and the GWR and the names of the representatives, who witnessed the records making during their visit, at the GWR website.
"The names of the representatives and their designations all can be found on the GWR website," he added. He said: "We have contacted the GWR to have their point of view in this regard and soon they will reply to us and update the data on their website as they have their own strategy and they take some time to post the records after consultation."
Earlier, batting first after losing the toss, England-Pak XI posted a total of 142 for the loss of eight wickets in the allotted 20 over. Arsalan Yasin and Yasin Khan played superb knocks of 29 and 26 runs respectively for the visiting team. Khurram and Sarwar also contributed invaluable innings of 21 and 20 runs respectively.
In reply, GCU cricket team could manage only 117 in 17.3 over. For GCU XI, Asif Bashir and Adil Shah claimed two wickets each for 13 and 27 runs, respectively. Hamza Ali and Nauman Butt were the only players, who played well for the host team and contributed 29 and 19 runs. LCMBIT XI bowlers bowled well and helped their team restrict GCU XI to a low total of 117. The bowlers demonstrated wonderful accuracy and did not let the GCU XI batsmen settled down. Yasin Khan and Waqas were the most successful bowlers as both clinched three and two wickets for 28 and 23 runs, respectively. Khurram Malik and Shan also managed to get one wicket each. M Imtiaz and Nasir Malik supervised the match while Asif Ali acted as scorer.