{"id":5678,"date":"2016-10-05T13:40:59","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T08:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kashmir.today\/?p=5678"},"modified":"2016-10-05T13:40:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T08:10:59","slug":"pakistan-barred-kabaddi-world-cup-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=5678","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan barred from Kabaddi World Cup in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><b>New Delhi:\u00a0<\/b><\/em>The 12-nation Kabaddi World Cup kicks off this week in India, with a row over a decision to bar arch-rivals Pakistan from competing threatening to overshadow the tag-wrestling sport\u2019s showcase event.<\/p>\n<p>With the World Cup last staged nine years ago, teams are relishing the chance to compete in the two-week event being held in India\u2019s western city of Ahmedabad.<\/p>\n<p>However, <em>International Kabaddi Federation<\/em> (IKF) chief Deoraj Chaturvedi, who is from India, said Pakistan has been denied entry because of a spike in tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations, <em>The Dawn<\/em>.com reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not the right time to engage with Pakistan,\u201d Chaturvedi said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPakistan is a valuable member of the IKF but looking at the current scenario and in the best interest of both the nations, we decided that Pakistan must be refrained from the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan accused the IKF of unfairly targeting the country, saying both rival nations should have been excluded if there were security concerns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have called a meeting to discuss this issue but let me tell you that a Kabaddi World Cup is no world cup without Pakistan,\u201d said Pakistan Kabaddi Federation secretary Rana Muhammad Sarwar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is just like a football world cup without Brazil,\u201d Sarwar said.<\/p>\n<p>Pakistan captain Nasir Ali said his players had been favourites to clinch the cup after defeating India at the six-nation Kabaddi Cup held in Pakistan in May and last month\u2019s Asian Beach Games in Vietnam.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were hoping to win the world cup in India by beating India,\u201d Ali said, adding that fans were being denied matches between the top two sides.<\/p>\n<p>Hostilities between the nations have flared after India said last week it conducted \u201cmilitary strikes along Line of Control\u201d in Kashmir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Delhi:\u00a0The 12-nation Kabaddi World Cup kicks off this week in India, with a row over a decision to bar arch-rivals Pakistan from competing threatening to overshadow the tag-wrestling sport\u2019s showcase event. With the World Cup last staged nine years ago, teams are relishing the chance to compete in the two-week event being held in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-union-territory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}