Bangladesh, Pakistan keen to make impact

NEW DELHI: Almost a decade back, cricket overtook football in neighbouring Bangladesh as the No.1 game.
Now, the Bangladesh football players are hoping to gain some lost ground by making an impact in the SAFF Championship which begins at the Nehru Stadium on Friday.
Bangladesh open their campaign against Pakistan in the inaugural Group B match while Nepal take on Maldives in the second match of the day.
A win here could surely give a boost to a team which has remained starved for success after its lone title win in the 2003 edition. Despite their lean patch, Bangladesh can still gain a lot of strength from the fact that they are the highest-ranked team here, even ahead of hosts India.
"Our team will play good football and we want to be the champions," Bangladesh's Macedonian coach Nikola Illevski summed up his team's mood on the eve of the match.
Their rivals Pakistan will depend on a mix of young and experienced, foreign-based players, including England-born Adnan Ahmed, who is a product of Manchester United's youth team. Besides Ahmad, defender Atif Bashir and Denmark-based Hassan Bashir will play crucial roles for Pakistan -- they can lift their team with their vast experience of playing abroad in European leagues.
"We have worked hard for this tournament," Pakistan coach Zavisa Milosavljevich said on Thursday. "The preparations have been good... we want to play good football."
Pakistan's 30-year-old captain Jaffar Khan said his team aims to win matches on the field and hearts off it.
"We will try to win the championship no matter how tough our matches are," he said.
"We are the first team to visit India in a long time and I hope that our good conduct and play will leave a good impression of Pakistan here."
For the record, Pakistan are yet to win the event and their best finish came in the 1997 edition where they finished third.