THE sad performance of the Pakistan hockey team at the ongoing Azlan Shah Cup has embarrassed the nation yet again.

The team has witnessed successive drubbing at the hands of Australia, New Zealand, India and even Malaysia, with only a solitary win in the opening clash against the lowly ranked Canada in the seven-team contest.

In fact, the thumping 1-5 defeat inflicted by India pretty much vindicates the Indian media’s claims earlier that India’s top-notch players were absent from the hockey finals at the South Asian Games in Guwahati last February which Pakistan narrowly won.

Sport can sometimes be cruel. Unexpected bad luck can play havoc with a player’s or a team’s progress.

But the Pakistan team had no such excuse for defeat as its approach to the game during the event was unstructured throughout.

The players failed to show any spark in defence and attack, and their lacklustre performance exposed their ill-preparedness.

The Azlan Shah Cup debacle, which comes on the heels of the national team’s ignominious disqualification for the World Cup 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, rankles even more in the backdrop of Pakistan’s impressive past record at the Malaysian event which saw the team emerging as title winner thrice besides being runner-up on six other occasions.

During its glory days Pakistan was to hockey what West Indies was to cricket in the 1970s. Since then, however, incompetent and allegedly corrupt regimes at the Pakistan Hockey Federation have seen the game slipping.

In fact, the overall decline is due to a combination of factors such as maladministration, internal politics, lack of funds and missing infrastructure.

Besides the ostrich-like attitude of those in control has also hurt Pakistan hockey that, like cricket, needs to be liberated from the clutches of unelected power-brokers.

A command structure that is competent, democratic and transparent in its functioning and gives primacy to the raising of standards and the welfare of players must be put in place to revive the national game’s fortunes.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2016