DEAD and buried is how one can describe the present state of Pakistan hockey as the sport’s Tsars hammered the last nail into the game’s coffin. Of course this was achieved when the national side gave yet another dismal performance by finishing a pathetic fifth in Athens.
No matter how excruciating the loss is for hockey buffs at home, it was certainly not a bolt from the blue. All the prophecies about a debacle in Greece proved true for it was evident that team would fell by the wayside owing to the follies being committed for quite a long time by the people at the helm of hockey affairs.
The trend, rather the team’s tendency of buckling under in a crunch match, remains the sore point of the green shirts. They did relatively well in all the matches but crumbled in the crucial game against Spain which they lost 4-0. The thrashing extinguished Pakistan’s hopes of reaching the semifinals and the team could not even make it to the podium, what to talk about the gold.
But there are a few more predictions about the unprofessional attitude of the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) top brass that are now proving true. Although the PHF secretary concedes that the top officials are responsible for the fiasco in Athens, he neither utters a word about stepping down nor he admits that the recent performance is alarming.
The most hilarious, woeful, mind-blowing but not astonishing was an official statement by PHF secretary Brig. Musarrat Ullah Khan, after the Olympic disaster. While he admitted the top officials, were culpable for the fifth place, yet he felt ‘satisfied’ on the performance, saying “team collapsed due to must-win situation against Spain and luck was not on our side at any stage.”
For a hockey lover the statement was as amusing as it was painful. Perhaps he is unaware that hockey is a game of skills, team work and determination, not Russian roulette which could be won by a stroke of luck. If the team is still giving erratic performances then there must be some grey areas that need to be identified after a postmortem.
The PHF secretary has admitted that top officials, including him, PHF chief Gen. Aziz Khan, selection committee and the team management, all are responsible for the poor showing. But as expected he has been trying to drag coach Roelant Oltmans into the morass. While PHF blames the coach for the defeat, amazingly, the secretary is non-committal whether the Dutchman would be asked to leave after the expiry of his contract.
“The coach had ample time to prepare the squad in nine months and was not under pressure to accept the hot seat”, says the PHF secretary. But the question is why PHF hired the Dutchman just nine months ahead of the biggest sporting extravaganza, especially when the coach never gave the officials a guarantee of even winning the bronze?
The working of the top officials of PHF has become dubious after the revelation by Musarrat about the role of the selection committee and the selection of the Olympic squad. The secretary insists that selectors do have a say and it was only they who axed veteran forward Mohammad Sarwar from the squad, although Oltmans was adamant to include the player.
“The coach has criticized the performance of Sarwar but he was in favour of his selection too which had no logic, therefore, the president approved the decision of the selection committee,” Musarrat made a startling disclosure.
The disclosure by the secretary was bewildering if one recalls the statement of Gen. Aziz about the selection of the team. The PHF boss had clearly stated that the squad had been selected after what he said a ‘consensus’ between the selectors and the coach.
The contradiction in statements of two top officials clearly indicates that either there is lack of communication between the officials or the nation and media has been hoodwinked by the PHF. In both cases, PHF owes an explanation to the nation.
If one goes by what the secretary said then it simply seems to be a case of too many cooks spoil the broth. The PHF and selectors unnecessarily poked their noses into coach’s affairs and destroyed the build-up. If the composition of the team was not what Oltmans was demanding, then the responsibility of the disaster is on the shoulders of the PHF and the selectors, not of the coach.
Being the coach, Oltmans had moral responsibility of the results which he accepted. But considering team captain Mohammad Nadeem’s remarks, if one holds the coach culpable for loss against Spain it seems to be finding a scapegoat and appeasing PHF officials.
There is no wisdom in holding Oltmans responsible since Nadeem has openly admitted that it was the players who did not play according to the plan chalked-out by the coach.
Another alarming factor was that Musarrat sees no hurdle for the selectors in future, while Akhtar says Mohammad Saqlain, thrown out of the squad by coach on disciplinary grounds before pre-Olympic European tour, will be considered for September-October series against India and December’s Champions Trophy in Lahore.
One could easily guess where Pakistan hockey is heading for Oltmans has categorically said Saqlain’s career is over as far as his opinion is concerned.
What is really amazing is the audacity of the top officials for they still choose to stick to their offices, while such defeats could have created a storm had any European outfit lost in such a way. Heads would have rolled if any European team lost, while preparations for the World Cup and 2008 Beijing Olympics would have been already underway.
Pakistan hockey has already gone through a lot of turmoil and faced ignominious exits wherever the team has gone in the last four year. Be it the last two Olympics, the World Cup, the Asian Games or the Commonwealth Games, the team has returned empty-handed by giving record-breaking worst-ever performances.
The 7-2 thrashing at Commonwealth Games semifinal at the hands of minnows New Zealand, and coming back from Kuala Lumpur in 2002 Asian Games without any medal in the history of the Games are perfect examples of the game’s decline.
Athens was the last opportunity for PHF officials. PHF changed the team management and the selection committee, more than thrice and even hired a foreign coach. Yet it ended up as a failure. The back-to-back failures suggest there is something, somewhere wrong within the setup of the PHF, not with the team management or anyone else.
It’s time for the people sitting in the corridors of power to take stock of the situation, audit the PHF accounts, sack the top officials and hold fresh elections.
Axing of over-the-hill-veterans like goalkeeper Ahmad Alam, skipper Mohammad Nadeem, Ali Raza and few other unimpressive ones, should be the next step to gear-up for the 2006 World Cup and 2008 Beijing Olympics. That is the real and the only solution to the disease devouring the entire structure of Pakistan hockey for so many years.
DEAD and buried is how one can describe the present state of Pakistan hockey as the sport’s Tsars hammered the last nail into the game’s coffin. Of course this was achieved when the national side gave yet another dismal performance by finishing a pathetic fifth in Athens.
