Adil Najam

Stunning news indeed.

In the cricket T20 Semi-Finals Afghanistan beat Pakistan by 22 runs to reach the Asian Games Final. And in the Semi-Finals of Asian Games Kabaddi, Iran beat Pakistan 17-16 to make it to the Final.

Pakistan is now out of the Finals of the two sports that it was considered to be favorites in. Two sports than are considered more ‘Pakistani’ than most others: Cricket and Kabaddi.

Pakistan did make it to the Finals of Squash in the Mens’ Team category, the Pakistani Mens’ hockey team plays in the Finals today, and the earlier gold victory of the Pakistani women in T20 cricket has already raised the national spirits.

The Changing Face of Kabaddi: Iran’s Mens’ team playing Pakistan in Kabaddi (pre-Asian Games photo); Iran’s Women team playing Taiwan at the Asian Games.

Owais Mughal and Adil Najam

We are honored to learn that All Things Pakistan has been named the Best South Asian Blog in the Seventh Annual Brass Crescent Awards 2010 | 1431. We are grateful for the recognition which comes just a few months after Pakistaniat was named Pakistan’s Best Current Affairs Blog at the First Pakistan Blog Awards. We are as humbled by these recognitions as we have been at being honored in the Top Ten Pakistani Blogs lists that Light Within releases each year (2009, 2008, 2007, 2006).

We are thankful for this recognition, even as we underscore that our greatest recognition comes daily in the form of readers who take out the time to visit, to comment, to converse with us, to read what we write, to suggest what we should write, to gripe about, and sometimes even to appreciate what we are trying to do here. Beyond all other, they remain our inspiration and our motivation. Beyond all other, we are thankful to our readers.

Adil Najam

Pakistan hockey team made it to the finals of the Asian Games after a lapse of 20 years – the last time they did so was also in China in 1990 – with goalkeeper Salman Akbar the hero of the day for saving the last South Korean strike in the semi-finals shootout.

Pakistan will ow play Malaysia in the Finals.