Pakistan's tennis players are winning without support

Two players nobody has heard of, competing at a level nobody is watching

The episode opens with Muzamil making a small confession. “I’m not a very sporty person,” he says, “I was neither an athlete nor do I follow sports.” But he had learned that two young men sitting across from him were, respectively, the number two men’s tennis player in Pakistan and the former number one under-18 player in the country. That was enough to get them on the show — not to celebrate them, but to understand what their lives actually look like.

Muhammad Shoaib is from Peshawar, now based in Islamabad. Abdullah Adnan is from Lahore. Both are in their late teens or early twenties. Both trained under the same level-three coach, Asim Shafi, at the Pakistan Tennis Federation facility in Islamabad. And both are, by any reasonable measure, competing at a level that their country has no real system to support.

How you become a tennis player in Pakistan

Shoaib’s entry into tennis was almost accidental. His maternal uncle was a former national player who had transitioned into coaching at a local club in Peshawar. As a six or seven-year-old, Shoaib would ride on the back of his uncle’s bicycle to the club on Sundays. “I used to go with him on Sunday on the cycle, sitting behind him — I just wanted to play a little tennis,” he recalls. That casual habit turned into under-10 and under-12 national titles, then under-14 number one. When he realised he had hit the ceiling of what Peshawar’s coaching infrastructure could offer, he moved to Islamabad, found Asim Shafi, and within a year or two had built an ITF ranking of around 300 and climbed to number two in the men’s national rankings.

Abdullah’s path was similar in structure. His father had been the army’s number one tennis player and took him to clubs from an early age. “He didn’t let me become a tennis player, but he said — I want you to achieve that dream,” Abdullah explains. Proper coaching started at ten, under a coach named Nasib in Lahore. He became under-12 national champion, then under-16 number one. In 2018, he travelled to Bangkok for the junior Davis Cup — essentially the junior world cup of tennis — where Pakistan beat Kazakhstan, one of the top teams in the draw. He came back believing he could compete internationally. Then a back stress fracture kept him out for over a year. He returned, trained again with Asim Shafi at the PTF, won five national titles, and reclaimed the number one under-18 ranking.

The Davis Cup and what it means to qualify for World Group

At the time of recording, both players were preparing to travel to Austria for a Davis Cup tie. Muzamil asks Shoaib to explain the structure. Locally, players enter tournaments individually and travel at their own expense. Internationally, the federation covers team travel for Davis Cup ties. The significance of the Austria match is that Pakistan is currently in Group One — a win would take them into the World Group, where the teams include the nations of Nadal, Djokovic, and Federer.

“If we qualify for the World Group, our tennis can improve a lot,” Shoaib says, “because in the World Group, almost all of these — Nadal, Djokovic, Federer — those are the teams there.”

Pakistan had already beaten Lithuania in a previous tie, despite the Lithuanian player being ranked around world number fifty and currently playing US Open qualifiers. The Pakistani players had gone months without a competitive match before that tie. They won anyway. “People were saying maybe you have a five percent chance of winning,” Shoaib recalls. “But end of the day, we won comfortably.”

Five to seven lakh for a whole year — and that is if you win everything

Muzamil pushes on the economics. How does a professional tennis player in Pakistan actually sustain themselves?

The answer is bleak. There are roughly five or six national tournaments per year. If a player wins all of them, they might earn five to seven lakh rupees in total prize money. “That is not enough,” Shoaib says flatly. “As a player, you train all year, you keep a personal coach, you do everything — and if you win five or six tournaments, you get five to six lakh. That is not enough for a player.”

For context, Muzamil notes that five to seven lakh would not cover a single trip to Dubai. The PTF does house and support its top ten to fifteen players at its Islamabad academy, covering basic living costs. But international tournament entry fees, flights, and accommodation for individual events are the player’s own problem — unless they have a sponsor, which almost none of them do.

The two realistic options, Abdullah explains, are a US university scholarship — which he is actively pursuing — or finding a private sponsor willing to cover travel and entry fees. “Either when you are 18 or 19 you go abroad, and there are scholarships available at many universities in America — that is one option I am also trying to get. Or you have a sponsor who says, you play internationally, we will pay for your coaches and your expenses. Or you are just doing it on your own, which is basically what both of us are doing right now.”

The broadcast problem and the eyeballs problem

Muzamil raises what he sees as the root cause: nobody is watching. “Money is driven by eyeballs, and eyeballs are driven by user interest.”

Shoaib confirms it directly. When Pakistan played Lithuania in the Davis Cup tie — a match against a world top-50 player — it was not broadcast live. The reason: a Pakistan Test match was scheduled on the same day, and PTV Sports had no room. “When we were playing Davis Cup, they were not showing it live because on those same days there was a Test match running,” Shoaib says. “So even that was not shown.”

The consequence is circular. No broadcast means no audience. No audience means no sponsors. No sponsors means players cannot afford to travel internationally. No international play means rankings stagnate. Stagnant rankings mean no broadcast interest. The loop closes on itself.

Later in the discussion, Muzamil points to what broke this cycle in cricket: the PSL. A commercial league, privately run, that created city-based rivalries and gave people a reason to care about domestic players. “Suddenly now there is so much money that young talent from grassroots is being noticed,” he says. He asks whether any equivalent model exists for tennis. The answer from both players is no — not yet.

The German company and what it says about where support comes from

One moment in the conversation is quietly striking. Abdullah mentions, almost in passing, that both he and Shoaib recently received their first meaningful corporate sponsorship. It came from a German equipment company. The deal: post a photo on Instagram wearing their shirt, and they will cover your strings and grips for the year.

“A German company sponsored both of us recently,” Abdullah says. “They were like — if you put a photo on your Instagram with our shirt, we will sponsor you for the year for strings and grips. That was great of them.”

Strings and grips. From Germany. That is the level of support Pakistan’s top two junior and senior tennis players had secured at the time of this recording.

Muzamil’s argument: this is a solvable business problem

By the end of the conversation, Muzamil is visibly frustrated — not at the players, but at the absence of anyone in Pakistan’s private sector treating this as the commercial opportunity it plainly is. He has had versions of this conversation before, he says, with MMA fighters, squash players, esports competitors. The pattern is always the same: talent exists, results exist, and nothing changes.

“Sports is a no-brainer all over the world. It is an excellent way to make money,” he says. “You have a nation full of youth that has enough free time that its prime time is political talk shows. That same audience can very easily invest its attention in sports.”

His proposed model is not complicated. Athletes already exist. Events can be ticketed. Sponsors follow eyeballs. “You have event managers in Pakistan who sell tickets to dance parties. You can treat a sports event the same way. It is really just about that.” He points to polo as a sport that already has corporate investment — not because anyone watches it, but because it functions as a private club for business elites. The same energy, redirected toward tennis or squash or hockey, could produce something with actual public reach.

Muzamil closes with a direct appeal to the corporate sector: “People are investing tons of cash in startups, in apps, in all of those things. There is an incredible opportunity in sports. It is a solvable problem. It is right there in front of us and we are not thinking about it.”

Shoaib’s parting thought is simpler. “If even half the crowd that goes to PSL matches came to our tennis matches, our tennis would improve. We would pump ourselves up — we would not want to lose in front of our own crowd.”