THE Champions Trophy is under way in the German city of Cologne, and it is after a long time that we in Pakistan are able to watch some live action on a hockey field. I had written repeatedly about the importance of bringing live action to the home audience, and I feel it mandatory to thank the authorities concerned who at last paid heed to a rational plea.
But old habits dies hard, and the PTV has continued to show its bias against the game as compared to cricket. The match against South Korea was played on the day when the national cricket team was facing Kenya in an inconsequential match in Nairobi. But the telecast of the hockey match was repeatedly interrupted by the cricket coverage. It was disgusting, to say the least.
The PTV bosses could not hold back cricket coverage by two 35-minute sessions, when they could have easily shown the latest score and that would have done. On the contrary, it is never enough in hockey to have the scoreline available to you. It is a constantly moving game, and one has to see it fully to have a feel of how things unfolded on the filed.
One hopes the PTV will behave much more professionally in the future even though it may have to sacrifise a bit of revenue by skipping the cricket telecast for about an hour. But, then, state-run enterprises are not all about profit-making. They have to keep the national interest in sight, and efforts to promote the national game — in fact, salvage it — shall be considered a national interest. More than the PTV, it is the private cable network Ten Sports that is bringing the entire Champions Trophy live, and it is a wonderful opportunity for all those who have access to it, to watch the best of the teams in action against each other.
As for the action itself, Australia surprisingly has made a very pedestrian start to the campaign. I had written in my last column that the Australians are prone to missing out on a lot of scoring opportunities and don’t have a particularly smart penalty corner drill, but I never thought they would fare this badly.
Pakistan, on the other hand, was able to make a much better start than many would have thought. The boys gave the strong German outfit a real run for their money. Unfortunately, they could not hold their advantage long enough, and lost in the last five minutes a battle that they had almost won. The lesson to learn here is that no game is not over until it is actually over. To let your guard down is not the thing to do. But the boys did play well, and there can be little doubt about that. The game against the South Koreans, very surprisingly, turned out to be a tame affair, much more facile than even the Pakistanis had expected. Maybe the South Koreans were feeling the absence of a couple of their key players who were out on account of injury, but that takes nothing away from the national team which played well and deserved to win.
The defeat against the Netherlands has all but sealed Pakistan’s fate in the tournament. It will take some major and multidimensional upheaval in the tournament to enable Pakistan to reach the final.
