Rubina (left) and Nazo in action at the Asian Championship in Japan in 1988
“And then when I returned I won back all my other titles — ladies individuals, ladies doubles and mixed doubles — too. And this despite Lahore having the upper hand over Karachi players,” she says.
For her outstanding game, Nazo was also decorated with the President’s Pride of Performance award in 1991. “Poet Parveen Shakir, actor Nadeem and Dr Adeebul Hasan Rizvi were the other recipients of the award along with me that year,” she says. “I still remember that moment as if it were yesterday. I was also fasting on that March 23 as it was the month of Ramazan,” says Nazo, who has become very religious after her retirement.
The middle sister Seema then points out how she juggled sport with her job, marriage and kids along the years. She also mentions another three sisters. “Though Rubina, Nazo and myself found acclaim in the game, it is not that there were just the three because we are six sisters and two brothers in all. Three more sisters, Talat, Nasreen and Samina, who are older than us, also played table tennis though they didn’t play on the national or international levels,” she says.
She says when the ping pong table at home was not available to her while her sisters were playing, she would play against the wall like squash or get busy in shadow practice. “We also went to play at the St John’s Club or Sharfabad Club. “Girls were not allowed at the Sharfabad Club but our coach Zamir Mirza got us in because he believed in us. Coach and player Saeed Akhtar also supported us a lot during those early years,” she says.
Seema got picked by HBL in 1976, one year after her older sister Rubina. She says that the years all three sisters were playing was a golden era for the bank too. “They still have a room full of our trophies,” she says.
All three sisters left their job with the bank in 1997 when they were offered a golden handshake with several other employees.
Seema, who is married to the former Pakistan hockey captain Kaleemullah, has two daughters. She says with pride that she married the winning goal-scorer of the 1984 hockey Olympics final.
Nazo’s marriage to the cricketer didn’t last but she remarried and has a teenage son from her second marriage to a senior journalist. None of the sisters’ children have ventured into sports though.
Today their homes are located within the same neighborhood in close proximity to each other. The old ping pong table at their mother’s place often beckons them for a quick game amid plenty of laughter as they share moments of days gone by.
The writer is a member of staff
She tweets @HasanShazia
Published in Dawn, EOS, May 5th, 2019