LAHORE: The Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has appointed former Olympian Naveed Alam as director development and domestic with effect from Feb 1.

Naveed has taken charge of the post created recently. He was last time associated with the PHF as coach -- at the time of 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Pakistan finished a poor eighth at the 2008 Olympics after he remained mostly in the legal courts over the PHF elections under which Qasim Zia and Asif Bajwa were elected as president and secretary, respectively. The Qasim Zia-led body however remained in place.

Naveed was to join Akhtar Rasool-led PHF as member of the selection committee before Akhtar resigned due to immense pressure from the Prime Minister House, which wanted to see incumbent president retired Brig Sajjad Khokhar, who worked as selector and manager of the national team during the tenure of retired Brig Musarratullah Khan.

Another post is also being created for Musarratullah in the PHF and most probably he may work as director general.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2016