LAHORE, May 24: Former Olympian Manzoor Junior has demanded the current hierarchy of the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) to tender their resignations, otherwise the new govt will sack them for their dismal showing in their five year tenure.

“The state of the game draws parallels to that of Wapda [due to which citizens are facing an acute shortage of the electricity] and similarly the PHF leadership of Qasim Zia and Asif Bajwa should accepts their mistakes and leave,” Manzoor told Dawn on Friday.

“If they refuse to resign, the new government of Nawaz Sharif should not only sack them but it should also order for the special audits of the PHF accounts, because the government had fed them around Rs 600million in five years,” he added.

Manzoor also downplayed Pakistan’s gold medal win in the Asian Games and the Asian Champions Trophy along with the national team’s third-placed finish at the Champions Trophy, saying everyone knew the circumstances under which those titles were earned.

“We didn’t play like a true champions as our place in the final and third-position matches came after other results had gone our way,” he said. “We’re still not recognised as a formidable force in the game.”

Manzoor, who earned gold medal for Pakistan in the Los Angles Olympics in 1986, said people possessing fake coaching degrees have been hired to run PHF academies and had thus failed to produce a star player in the last five years.

He added that the funds allocated to the PHF were used miserably by hiring foreign coaches who didn’t help in restoring Pakistan’s former glories while asking the new government to bring a new PHF set up on merit with the FIH World Cup next year.—Sports Reporter