LAHORE: Disgruntled secretary of the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) Rana Mujahid has also decided to resign from his post, giving free hand to the newly-elected PHF president retired Brig Khalid Sajjad Khokhar to work with like-minded people.

Rana will make official announcement in this regard at a news conference in Islamabad on Wednesday wherein the new selection committee and management for the national junior team will also be revealed.

Sources told Dawn that Rana wanted to work with the new PHF president but he found that a lobby supporting the new president of the federation was not happy with him due to which he was not able to work comfortably with the new president.

As the PHF secretary Rana faced criticism during his 21-month long tenure despite the fact that the performance of the national team which hardly received any financial grant from the government was steadily improving.

Rana along with the recently retired PHF president Akhtar Rasool succeeded in raising a team which played three finals in 2014 including that of the World Champions Trophy held in India. Besides, Pakistan also won gold medal in the Asian Champions Trophy and earned a silver medal in the Asian Games the same year.

But the PHF could not field a well-prepared team for the Olympic qualifiers held in Belgium in June-July this year because of the federal government’s lackluster attitude towards the PHF which resulted in severe shortage of funds the hockey federation had to be faced with.

The federal government even did not honour the national team for playing three back-to-back finals.

Surprisingly, the IPC released the prize money to players for winning a silver medal in the Asiad at a time when the greenshirts were nowhere in the race for Olympics.

Ouster from the Olympics actually paved the way for those wanting to remove the-then PHF president Akhtar Rasool and other officials with the-then chief selector Islahuddin Siddiqi being the first one to resign forthwith while Akhtar Rasool followed suit.

Later, the first general body meeting was held in Islamabad, on Aug 27 which gave vote of confidence to Khokhar besides raising hands to give the vote of confidence to Rana too to continue as PHF secretary.

In the same general body meeting, Akhtar Rasool era’s head coach Shahnaz Sheikh tendered his resignation which was accepted.

And now Rana has also decided to resign despite the fact he had achieved the vote of confidence from the general body.

Sources further said that Khokhar and the Prime Minister Secretariat wanted their men at the post of secretary with the former wanting someone belonging to the Pakistan army while the new PHF president is in favour of appointing Olympian Shahbaz Senior as PHF secretary.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2015

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