KARACHI, June 20: The under-18 national hockey training camp has become a farce as coaches, who are absent for two days, prefer to offer “comments” on television on the ongoing Azlan Shah Cup matches in Kuala Lumpur.

Qamar Ibraheem, also national junior team coach, and goalkeeping coach Ahmad Alam, who have been assigned to train the youngsters, were absent from the camp on Monday as they opted to sit in a cozy studio of a local private television channel to offer comments on the matches.

While the youngsters trained in the blistering heat under physical trainer Irshad Hussain, Qamar and Ahmad were not available on Tuesday also as they were busy in their “commentary assignment”.

Both Qamar and Ahmad came few minutes before the end of training on Monday, while on Tuesday they visited the venue when the training was over.

Waseem Feroze, who was a vocal critic of Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) before being called up for coaching of under-18s, was also busy in making comments on the TV channel and came to Hockey Club of Pakistan an hour late Tuesday afternoon.

While the coaches are busy in doing commentary, interestingly, Danish Kaleem and Mohammad Farooq, two of the six coaches deputed to train youngsters in Karachi, left the camp for Quetta where another such “training camp” will be set up to explore talent yet to be tapped.

The 16-day camp in Karachi has been established by PHF as part of talent hunt scheme. The players, who failed to make room in junior team that recently played a tournament in Poland, have been invited to prepare a pool of backup players.

For that purpose, focusing on quantity rather than quality of the coaches, PHF appointed half a dozen former internationals including Qamar, Danish, Waseem, Ahmad, Kamran Ashraf, and Farooq as coaches.

Appointments by PHF were also questionable considering the disciplinary background of the former players. For instance, Ahmad had abruptly quit international hockey in 2001 after a row with one of his coaches, Shahbaz Ahmad.

The former Pakistan goalkeeper was admonished by the then team management for indiscipline and raising voice against Shahbaz. He was also blamed for leaking stories of hockey sticks smuggling by Shahbaz during a European tour. Reading the writing on the wall, he had called it quits, citing a dip in his form and saying that he wanted to make room for youngsters.

Ahmad tendered unconditional apology to PHF for announcing his retirement without consultation and staged a comeback after 2002 World Cup only to be booted out after 2004 Athens Olympics as PHF stated he is catching up age fast.

Danish has also been involved in indiscipline when he used foul language against the umpire in 2004 during a local tournament while sitting on the bench as a player. He was removed from the bench later by director domestic hockey Muhammad Shafique.

Unprofessional approach by the coaches is not the sole problem at the camp. The teenagers are being forced to train in sweltering heat from 1.00pm to 5.00pm which is unprecedented.