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| June 12, 2005 | Sunday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 4, 1426 |
Hanif, Rashid blame PHF officials for decline
KARACHI, June 11: Two former hockey greats on Saturday blamed top Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) officials for the national sport’s decline and urged for a change in administration following team’s 1-0 humiliation by unrated Malaysia at Azlan Shah Cup.
Former captain Hanif Khan came down hard on the PHF president Tariq Kirmani and secretary Brig Musarrat Ullah Khan (retd), saying they were not helping the cause of the game with illogical policies and decisions.
“President PHF is ruining the sport by not taking action and removing the secretary. Why is he endorsing damaging decisions? On the other hand secretary has been messing things up feeding wrong information to the president and by obliging people.
“The secretary is running Pakistan hockey. He absolves himself from all the wrongdoings by claiming all is being done with the approval of the presidents. The fact is he has been misguiding the PHF presidents since he took over. But the irony is presidents have been accepting all this.
“Enough damage has been done and there is no room for more follies. We lost despite we had the most seasoned team having all the senior team players as contrary to PHF’s claims of having juniors,” he said.
Hanif said formation of joint team management for the senior team was a disaster. “The decision was strange and damaging which was proved as manager Samiullah Khan was sitting quietly on the bench, while assistant manager Shafiq and coach Tahir Zaman were calling the shots. There appears to be a rift between the team officials which disturbed the team.”
Pakistan were unbeaten in the recently-concluded Azlan Shah Cup in Kuala Lumpur before being humbled by lowly-rated Malaysians in the last and the most crucial match in which green shirts needed just a draw to make the final.
The shock defeat forced the team to play third/fourth place playoff in which they beat New Zealand 4-2.
Olympian Abdul Rashid Jr took a swipe at the PHF secretary, saying it was because of his continuous manipulations and strange policies for the past five years that Pakistan’s hockey fortunes had hit rock bottom having failed to win any major competition.
“He (Musarrat) misguided Gen Aziz Khan and took arbitrary decisions when the latter was the PHF president and now the secretary is misleading the new chief. These dirty tactics and manipulations are the major cause of our decline in hockey for the past five or six years,” he opined.
“Who recommended Muhammad Shafiq as the manager of the junior team and now the senior side? Gen Aziz approved Shafiq’s name as the team official but obviously it was Musarrat who recommended Shafiq who is involved in a police case for beating a Customs team player.”
The former centre-forward was critical of merging the senior and junior team managements to form a group of senior team bench officials, saying illogical decision was instrumental in Pakistan’s loss.
“PHF is once again giving lame excuses for the defeat by saying we lost because Shakeel (Abbasi) was not available due to injury against Malaysia. How a team can lose because of unavailability of one better player?”
Rashid was critical of appointing Mohammad Saqlain the captain despite his misconduct in the past which resulted in his axing from 2000 Sydney Olympic squad and 2004 Athens Games side.
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