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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Weekend Edition World South Sudan eyes basketball as new national pride AFP - Monday, January 10 Send IM Story Print South Sudan eyes basketball as new national pride JUBA, Sudan (AFP) - – If there is one thing south Sudan is famous for in the outside world, it is the super lofty stars with which it has studded the NBA. Now, as nationhood beckons, it is basketball that it is looking to to make a name in international sports. No sporting official in south Sudan is in any doubt that the week-long independence referendum which opens on Sunday will have any other outcome than its emergence as the newest entrant on the world sporting stage. And for the region's impoverished, war-ravaged population, basketball is not just by far the most popular spectator sport, it is also a national treasure. When the body of 2.31-metre-tall (seven foot seven inch) NBA legend Manute Bol was flown home to south Sudan last summer, not only did regional president Salva Kiir pay tribute at a requiem mass, but hundreds of mourners walked from miles around to attend his burial in his remote home village. When south Sudan looked to celebrate the final countdown to the referendum that they expect to bring a definitive end to five decades of conflict with the north, it put on a series of demonstration tournaments in the regional capital Juba that drew crowds of thousands. The city's baseball court is basic -- a raised platform above the dust serves as a playing surface and concrete terracing without seats accommodates spectators -- but it is the best in all of south Sudan. The region is one of the poorest in the world: before Bol achieved fame as a spectacular shot-blocker, he worked as a boy as a cattle herder. But poverty does not prevent south Sudanese sports officials from dreaming of converting the undoubted popular flare for the game into sporting success for the new nation. "We will try to improve the standard of basketball after the referendum as an independent country," said General Wilson Deng, honorary deputy chairman of the South Sudan Basketball Federation. Deng played for south Sudan in the short-lived period of peace that reigned between 1972 and 1983. When war broke out again, he immediately joined the rebels, eventually becoming head of sports in the south's ex-rebel army. He makes no secret of the foreign financial assistance that the new country will need to invest in its facilities and infrastructure if it is to make a mark on the international stage. "We will look for some good Samaritan who will try to help us in bringing up our standards," Deng said. "We need the NBA to assist." South Sudan's prospects have been improved by the return home of a number of wartime refugees who had the opportunity to hone their skills in the West and who are now keen to use them to develop the sport in their homeland. Deng Aldo Ajou Deng is brother of Chicago Bulls star Luol Deng, and also played professionally in Britain for the Brixton Topcats in south London and the Plymouth Raiders in the southwest. Born in the south Sudanese town of Wau in 1976, he fled to Egypt in 1988 and then Britain in 1994 before returning to his homeland with the signing of the 2005 peace agreement between the rebels and the Khartoum government. "Now we've got our own country, this is unbelievable for me. It's been a dream since 1988," Deng said. "I am a member of the South Sudan Athletic Association. We are all young guys trying to make it happen for basketball and for all sports in our country." Since his return, Deng has been working on building up a Juba league which he hopes will form the basis for a wider national league once independence has been achieved. John Kayanga, sport correspondent of the Juba Post, is in no doubt that south Sudan can achieve its basketballing dreams. "It's going to change, definitely," he said. "We will have an inter-state competition and from that we will have a national team. This is what we are hoping. "We have all the qualities. We have the height, we have the physique, so we believe we can win -- we believe we can be the best." 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