CHITRAL, Nov 19: Sending out a distress signal, local polo players have demanded that the grounds of the erstwhile state must be freed from encroachments and illegal occupation to promote the popular sport.

Talking to Dawn here on Friday, several prominent players including Taj Muhammad, Zar Khan Laal, Ghairat Ali and others said that the game was fading away from the area for want of playgrounds.

Known as the king of sports, traditional polo has been quite popular among the people of Chitral till the recent past as in each village there used to be a field for the game.

Taj Muhammad said that the former rulers of Chitral state fervently patronised the game and many of them were still remembered as consummate players of polo. In local epic stories, the hero used to be a polo rider.

Divided into fiefdoms as executive units, each was ruled by a prince who had provided his subjects a polo ground in their respective areas and thus there was no major village in the length and breadth of the state without a playing field.

He said that polo matches used to be a regular pastime of the princes which compelled them to patronise the sport lavishly. After the merger of Chitral state with Pakistan, the polo grounds were declared as state property which was notified by an extraordinary gazette notification of Pakistan in 1975.

The notification was, however, not implemented in its entirety as the individuals in most of the places started cultivating the polo grounds while in most of the villages the encroachers reduced the polo grounds to a narrow strip where no game could be played, they lamented.

Ghairat Ali said that reducing the number of playing fields had adversely affected the game and now the number of polo players had reduced to 100 in the district.

Substantiating their claim, the local star player said that in the yearly district polo tournament, more than 60 teams used to participate while presently it was hardly in 20s.

No real effort had ever been made by the government to redeem the polo grounds in different villages of the district, Mr Ali said and added that in many cases the grounds had been converted into roads, as in Rayeen, Sonoghoor, Kosht and Reshun villages.

The historic polo ground of Koghuzi village has been reduced to such an extent that now only three motor cars could be parked in it, Zar Khan Laal said.

He added that the freestyle polo of Chitral was greatly promoting the eco-tourism here as the game attracted foreign as well as local tourists.