Pakistan won't recall Abbas for Commonwealth Games

KARACHI: Sohail Abbas, Pakistan's record-breaking hockey player, will not feature in October's Commonwealth Games (CWG) in New Delhi as the country's hockey bosses have decided against including the veteran player in the national team.

A top Pakistan Hockey Federation official said on Wednesday that Abbas will not be invited for the preparatory camp for the October 3-14 Games because Pakistan doesn't need the short corner expert, who holds the record of scoring the highest number of goals in international hockey, anymore.

"We will not be inviting Abbas for the Commonwealth Games camp, we don't need him anymore," said Asif Bajwa.

Abbas skipped the team's training camp for the Europe tour last month and instead opted for the Bangladeshi League without informing the PHF, after he was disgruntled on his omission from the team for the Azlan Shah tournament.

Bajwa said the federation played its role by inviting the drag flick specialist repeatedly and will not ask him again to join the camp.

He also claimed that the team performed well in the Europe tour and did not miss the veteran player as Pakistan attempted to retain its lost status in hockey.

"The team showed improvement in Europe, where we achieved satisfactory results without Abbas," he said.

Pakistan will prepare for the CWG in two phases. The first phase will begin with a training camp in Abbottabad Aug 12-26. The team will then fly for a training camp to the Netherlands Sep 1-20. Bajwa said that chief selector Hanif Khan would announce the list of probables soon.

Meanwhile, Bajwa expressed satisfaction over the performance of Michel Van Den Heuvel, the team's new coach from the Netherlands, following the Europe tour which was the Dutchman's first assignment in the role.

Pakistan drew three matches against Spain, won the only battle against France and drew two matches against Holland during their two-week long sojourn.

Bajwa, who accompanied the team in Europe, said he saw positive changes in the team.

"There were some notable changes in the team. The coach has brought positive changes and we are happy with his performance. Heuvel is currently in Netherlands and will be returning before the Abbottabad camp to supervise the team's training. Heuvel will be back early next month to join the team and we are hoping for better results under him in the Commonwealth Games," he said.

Abbas overlooked for Pakistan's CWG and Asian Games squads

Pakistan's hockey selectors Thursday ignored veteran drag-flick ace Sohail Abbas for the preliminary squad for this year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi and Asian Games in Guangzhou, China.

A 25-man provisional squad was named by the national selection committee for a series of training camps ahead of the two major events.

The seasoned defender, who holds the record for the highest number of goals in international hockey, apparently paid the price for skipping a training camp earlier this summer.

However, Pakistan's chief selector Hanif Khan tried to make it clear that Sohail's omission had nothing to do with his decision to skip the training camp.

'We haven't selected Sohail Abbas because we don't need him any more,' said Hanif, an Olympian. Hanif stressed that Pakistan has a number of youngsters capable enough to fill in for Sohail.

'We have found some good young boys on our team's Europe tour especially Muhammad Tauseeq who converted penalty corners in matches against Holland and Spain earlier this month,' said Hanif.

Meanwhile, Sohail who recently returned home from Dhaka after featuring in the Bangladesh League is featuring in the Quaid-e-Azam Gold Cup Hockey Tournament - a major domestic event - in Karachi. He has been in prolific form, scoring four goals in two matches in the event so far.

Pakistan Hockey Federation

Hockey was originally brought to Pakistan under British rule, and like cricket soon became popular with the local population.

The Pakistan Hockey Federation came into being in 1948, following the independence and partition into Pakistan and India. Prior to this players from what is now Pakistan had competed internationally alongside players from what is now India. In the beginning, the Federation's membership included the Provincial Hockey/Sports Associations of West Punjab, East Bengal, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Bahawalpur & Services Sports Board. Pakistan played their first international in London when they defeated Belgium 2-1 in 14th Olympic Games hockey tournament on 2 August 1948.

The first President of PHF was Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan with Baseer Ali Sheikh as Honorary Secretary. The Pakistan national side soon established a strong reputation in international competition, helping to mainatin interest in the game in Pakistan which assisted the growth of the Federation. However, no full-time central office or secretariat, as such, was established until the 1960s.

The office of the Pakistan Hockey Federation, located in Gaddafi Cricket Stadium, Lahore, was developed into a Secretariat in 1971. It was during the second term as president of Air Marshal M. Nur Khan from 1978 that Pakistani hockey entered something of a golden age. National Senior, National Junior and Women Hockey Teams were all competing internationally, increasing the work load of PHF Office and secretary Brigadier M.H.Atif tremendously.

On the personal initiative of Air Marshal M. Nur Khan, the FIH introduced the World Cup Tournament and the Champions Trophy Tournament, which are now rated amongst the major international tournaments, alongside the Olympics. At this time, Pakistan held all the major titles in men's international hockey.

However, the 1976 Olympics in Montreal had seen the introduction of artificial turf to international hockey competition. Pakistan was unable to build as many of the new pitches as the European nations or Australia and New Zealand and so the strength of the national side declined. It was after a lapse of 12 years that the Pakistan Hockey Team again started climbing and won the Champions Trophy and the World Cup with Air Vice Marshal Farooq Umar as president and Colonel Mudassar as secretary of the Federation.

The PHF has provincial teams who play against each other such as; Baloch Lions, Capital Dynamos, East Bengal Tigers (1947-1970) = see Bangladesh Hockey Team, Frontier Falcon, Sindh Qalanders, Shan-e-Punjab and Northern Cavaliers.

In recent times, the Pakistan Hockey Team has seen some lacklustre performances and has failed to win a major hockey tournament since the 1994 World Cup, mainly due to lack of proper nurturing of youth, administrative problems, increasing apathy towards the game by public in favour of cricket, and unstable player-coach relationships.

Pakistan national field hockey team

After the poor performances following the 2010 Hockey World Cup the coach Shahid Ali Khan was sacked along with several other senior personnel and the entire squad announced their voluntary retirment following the poor performances however the PHF President refused to accept their resignations and the players continue to play for the team. It also emerged that the squad had been forced to annonce their retirment by a Asif Bajwa a senior official.^[3] Former Pakistani hockey player Shahbaz Ahmad announced that he would be willing to coach the team for free and he had been approached by the PHF however he also mentioned that he would not take the position unless Asif Bajwa was sacked.^{[4] [5]} Following this restructure the squad has seen somewhat of a resurgence with a 5-5 draw against the mighty Australians who won the 2010 Hockey World Cup.^[6] They also thrashed egypt 6-2. ^[7] The PHF is currently on the hunt for a foreign coach but presently gave the assignment of coaching to Khawaja Junaid.^[8] German coach Paul Lissek along with Australian Barry Dancer and Dutch coach Michel van den Heuvel was on the list however because of the current security situation it wasn't possible ^[9] The Dutch coach Michael van den Heuvel landed in Pakistan to come to agreement with the hockey federation for a possible coaching stint with the team. ^[10] While a deal is being planned Kwahaja Junaid returned to coaching the junior team while Manzoor Hussain has been appointed as the temporary coach of the team.^[11] A few days later the Pakistan Hockey Federation announced that Michel van den Heuvel has been appointed as pakistan hockey coach ^[12] with a pay of 10,000 euros. [13

Bangalore leads Google FIFA

India ranks third after South Africa (which hosts the event) and Indonesia, leaving all the other European countries behind,” Google said in a statement on Tuesday, Jun 8.

While it is a surprise that the cricket-crazy country is showing this much interest in a football event, Karnataka has emerged on top of the state list, pushing aside the football citadels of the country - Kerala and West Bengal.

In further regional break down, the country's IT hub and Karnataka's capital city, Bangalore has emerged on the top of the list of cities interested in FIFA World Cup 2010.Bangalore, which is followed by Mumbai and Delhi, has 100 points in Google’s Search Volume Index, which is derived based on the optimum number of searches from a city or a region.

Bangalore's entry into the list can be attributed to the net savvy youngsters as well as its cosmopolitan crowd. It is fueled further by the fact that the net savvy people from Kolkata and other cities have migrated to the south Indian city.

Online attackers profit from 2010 FIFA World Cup

According to Symantec, criminals compromise web servers hosted by well-known hosting providers and infect them with malware that generates poisoned links by associating the domains of known compromised web hosts with search terms from Google Trends.

The criminals are able to push their results up higher in the Google results page by leveraging the fact that Google ranks search results of domains that are more ‘interconnected’ higher, according to Symantec.

Once you click their poisoned search results you are re-directed to a fake AV (antivirus) site. The goal, as ever, is to get their bogus software out to as many victims as possible, and the excitement around the World Cup presents a golden opportunity.

Fake web pages are often designed to look like the user interfaces of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. After the users run the fake scan, they are offered a file named packupdate[RANDOM NUMBER]_195.exe to eliminate the problems and malware that were allegedly present.

Symantec's researchers have noticed that search engines such as Google are doing a good job at flagging and filtering out poisoned search terms from their search results. However, football fans are warned to be careful when searching for official World Cup 2010 information and advised to stick to legitimate news sites.

FIFA 2010: Final Spain Vs Netherlands

Unlike the opening ceremony, closing ceremony at the 2010 World Cup Stadium, Soccer City, Johannesburg, Monday (12 / 7) in the morning local time, will present the attractions of youth of Africa's colorful, make a party for the first time on the African continent will always be remembered.

Derek Carstens, Chairman of Marketing Committee of promises, the closing ceremony will take place by displaying the distinctive tastes of young African, contemporary art technology combined with world level. "Of the first World Cup in Africa has shown the uniqueness, passion and warmth of this continent and its people. Ceremony closure will be dedicated to honor the spirit, "said Carstens.

Although the final match Netherlands vs. Spain will take place at 20:30 (01:30 AM GMT), the event will have entertainment starting at 18:30 setempat.Upacara closing time will last for 30 minutes and broadcast live to 215 countries, including Indonesia. FIFA predicts at least 500 million pairs of eyes will see the end of the month-long party full of it.

Piala Dunia FIFA 2010: Final - Some important things that deserve to be remembered in connection with Intertwine Akbar is:
MascotEdition of the tournament's official mascot Zakumi this. Zakumi is a leopard is yellow, with hair "quirky" in green, wearing a shirt that read "South Africa 2010", and green shorts, and was holding a ball. Zakumi was born on June 16, 1994, to coincide with Youth Day in South Africa so that will be celebrated globally by 2010 FIFA World Cup crown.
Zakumi's name comes from the word "Za", which is a two-letter code for South Africa and "Kumi", a word that means ten in various African languages.

World Cup fifa 2010 trends

How exactly do search trends affect SEO? Well if you wrote any useful content on your website or blog over the past month and the few weeks leading up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup you would of seen a steady boost in your traffic. Thank you Sepp Blatter. As we wait in anticipation for Sunday’s final match, Google examines the most prominent search trends over the last 30 days.

The vuvuzela has certainly been one of the biggest talking points of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, and has since crossed beyond our borders into other countries. Even celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio have been spotted with their lips around this plastic phenomenon. Google Zeitgeist – which provides insight into global, national, past and present search trends – has revealed that the United Kingdom is the number one country searching for places to buy the vuvuzela, followed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

fifa worldcup unforgetable

FIFA World Cup 2010 is on the verge of end. This June is a festive month round the world. Watching every matches to take glimpse of amazing moments of goals, emotions and activity of players and viewers happening around the stadiums. Expressing those amazing moments by sharing with pictures is better than writing. So, lets start

Cricket World Cup Tipping and The most searched names in Cricket

On the opening day of the World Cup the host nation West Indies defeated Pakistan and started the tournament in the best possible way (unless you are from Pakistan). The second string Pakistan bowling lineup failed to get enough top order wickets after winning the toss and electing to bowl. It’s great to see a World Cup where the crowds have a successful home team to cheer on.I was playing with Google Trends to find out who has the biggest online buzz on the internet. This search is quite restrictive, if I was to search for a common cricketer name such as Vaughan or even Lara I would get far too many results as these names are common to non cricket topics. If I search a unique cricket name such as Tendulkar, Ganguly, Ponting or Akhtar (as in Shoaib Akhtar) I get results that look more like what I expectIn 2005 England won the Ashes test series and the name of Flintoff became the biggest name in the cricket world. Later in 2005 a guy by the name of Shane Warne was involved in a sex scandal setup by an English tabloid newspaper and he briefly became the biggest name in cricket, bigger than any other cricketer in the past two years. There is nothing like a bit of scandal!

IPL Cricket | IPLT20 | India Cricket | IPL Schedule | IPL Score | IPL Live

PL is the Indian Premier League started recently but became one of the mega event of cricket around the world. IPL season was hosted in the various cities of India but IPL season 2 was played outside India and the venue were the various cricket grounds in South Africa. Once again IPL is back and Indian cities are hosting the DLF IPL Season 3. IPL Cricket is the 20 overs cricket matches between the 8 cricket team which belong to various Indian cities and owned by the Industrialists, business houses or any other groups including the Bollywood stars. The IPL is full of Glamour it ranges from Bollywood to Politics and Sports to Business. IPL Season 3 has already been kicked yesterday that is on 12 th of April 2010. IPL T20 will continue for 45 days and total 60 matches will be played by the various teams in the IPL 3 including final. The schedule of the IPL 3 and details of various teams have been given in official website which is www.iplt20.com

This is first time that Google is the official partner of DLF IPL for live streaming of IPL Matches through youtube.com IPL Matches will be watched by the Cricket Fans around the world for their cricketing fever.

Cricket Fans around the world are sending the Cricket Scraps on Orkut / Face Book / Hi5 etc social networking websites. The IPL Scraps, Orkut Cricket, Cricket IPL Scraps etc can be send or demand from this websites based on your preferances.

Google Looks at World Cup Search Activity

The World Cup's 30 days of soccer began on Friday, and there will no doubt be plenty more related searching in the coming weeks. Google Consumer Operations Strategist Jaime Forman-Lau says:

It’s often said that football is a global sport, and that’s certainly true in search. Searches for [world cup 2010], [copa mundial] and [월드 컵] are all spiking, although overall World Cup buzz seems to be off to a slower start in 2010 than in the months leading up to the 2006 tournament, based on global trends for queries like [world cup] and [fifa world cup]. India is the #1 country searching for [fifa world cup schedule], [fifa 2010 schedule] and similar queries. And as the match-up between anglophone rivals England and USA approaches, searches for [england world cup] continue to far surpass interest in [usa world cup].

Most of us will be watching the matches on TV in pubs and living rooms, but a few lucky spectators will get to watch in person in South Africa. Searches for [world cup tickets] peaked in mid-April, and have since declined. But whether home or abroad, we’re all searching for the best way to show support for our team. Searches for [world cup decoration] have risen, and a glimpse at the Dutch shows queries for [oranje versiering] (“orange decoration”; orange is the Netherland’s national color) and [orange] have risen sharply for the last three months, as they have in 2006 and 2008 for the World Cup and European Cup.

Insights for Search shows a great level of interest in Cristiano Ronaldo and some other stars of the sport:

Sports, celebrities, politics and recession top Google trends list

As part of its year-end Zeitgeist trends results, which monitors search trends around the world, Google has released results of what South Africans have been searching for this year in the categories of politics, sport, celebrities and recession related queries.

In the political arena, some of the most popular searches included firebrand ANC Youth League President, Julius Malema, who pipped Helen Zille of the Democratic Alliance and Mvume Dandala of COPE as the third most searched for politician. Despite having a high volume of searches to his name, the Youth League president had to make way for his seniors, Jacob Zuma and Nelson Mandela who demonstrated their staying power by leading the rankings.

Former Springbok Joost van de Westhuizen had us all scrambling for our keyboards and heading for the Google search box when he released his biography. Joost’s relatively late entry into the gossip columns meant he was no match for perennial celebrity, DJ Sbu from youth radio station YFM who led the ‘most for searched for celebrity’ category. He was followed by socialite Khanyisile Mbau. The Benoni-girl done good, Charlize Theron, was not to be outdone coming a close third in the rankings.

In the sports category, the Super 14 rugby was the most searched for item, followed closely by the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket, which was quite an achievement as the event was moved to South Africa from India at a late stage in the planning process. Surprisingly, the Confederations Cup was fourth in the rankings despite it being a prelude to the 2010 World Cup, following the third placed Cape Argus cycle race.

This year’s Zeitgeist also reflects important South African concerns, such as understanding how the recession has impacted the local economy. In addition, recession-related keywords such as ‘recession jokes’ showed that not everyone was taking the recession so seriously. South African consumers have also adapted to the recession by being on the lookout for a good bargain, reflected increasing searches for goods in the second hand market on website such as Gumtree and Junkmail Cars.

You can see what the popular search terms are in other countries at Google’s Zeitgeist.

This year’s global fastest rising searches show interest across pop culture (with the King of Pop at the helm, followed by searches for movie New Moon and singer Lady Gaga), social networking sites and new technologies such as Windows 7 and Torpedo Gratis