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| November 2, 2001 | Friday | Shaba’an 15, 1422 |
Jahangir blames coach for poor finish
KARACHI, Nov 1: Pakistan’s legendary squash player Jahangir Khan Thursday said he was not satisfied with the Pakistan team’s showing at the World Team Championship as the overall standard displayed during the tourney was not very high.
“I am not at all satisfied with the 11th position finish simply because the overall standard of the Championship was not very high,” Jahangir, winner of a record ten British Open titles, told SADA.
Jahangir returned from Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday after attending the Championship and a meeting called by the World Squash Federation.
Pakistan, six-time winner of the World Team title, finished an abysmal 11th in the Championship, failing to qualify for the quarterfinals.
“Considering the efforts put in by the Pakistan Squash Federation the result is not encouraging and the players showed a lack of confidence and of proper coaching,” he said.
“The PSF has never held so many camps for a team in the past but I think the choice of coach was not correct and our team failed to live up to expectations.”
The Pakistan team was coached by former British Open Amateur champion Aftab Javed.
“Malaysian players Ong Bang Hee and Azlan Iskander are contemporaries of Pakistan’s Mansoor Zaman and Shahid Zaman yet they showed a remarkable improvement and impressed me,” he said.
Malaysia finished seventh and beat Canada.
“Ironically Malaysia is coached by Pakistan’s Jamshed Gul. Coaching was one area where we lacked control.”
Jahangir said Shahid Zaman has improved but needs to play consistently. “He has shown improvement but lacks consistency; he plays well in one championship and is off-color in the other.”
“Shahid has one more year to jump into the top ten. Otherwise players from other countries will take over,” he warned.
Jahangir said that Pakistan missed Amjad Khan’s experience during the event. “Amjad is an experienced player and unfortunately was unfit. His experience would have come in handy,” he said.
Jahangir, vice president of WSF, also attended the meeting.
“Pakistan was also willing to host the World Team Championship in 2003 but it had already been allocated to Denmark so we opted for the 2005 Championship and will make extensive plans to host the event in a befitting manner.”
Jahangir said that the World Open 2001 due to be held in Mumbai, India, was still on.
“India has assured it would provide all manner of security to the Pakistani players as well as visas. But we have no way of knowing what could erupt in the next few days. Foreign players have security reservations.”
Jahangir said that the WSF would continue their efforts to have squash included as an event in the Olympics.
“Since no new sport has been included in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, the WSF is focusing all its efforts to get squash a place in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”
Jahangir said that squash would feature in next year’s Commonwealth Games in the UK and in the Asian Games in South Korea.
“Pakistan will send its teams for both the events,” he said.—SADA
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