Given its recent performance, the Pakistani team was never a real contender for any medal at the London Olympics men’s field hockey, but even with such low expectations, its performance proved to be quite embarrassing. It’s been 28 years since the Pakistani team brought the title home. And despite the management’s tall claims, that the team would improve its Olympics standing, the show remained quite disappointing.

According to the media reports, no less than Rs50 crores were spent on the team’s preparations in building the squad for the London Olympics. Under the International Hockey Federation’s (FIH) rules, only 16 players form the Olympic squad. However, Pakistan took two extra players as back-up. The team head coach and manager Akhtar Rasool, in his reported press statements, is now talking about preparing the team for the 2014 World Cup. However, this seems nothing more than a tactic to divert the nation’s attention from the team’s abysmal performance.

On a relatively brighter note, Pakistan did put up a few decent performances, even though they did nothing to change the outcome. The first match against Spain, saw a thrilling 1-1 draw. The victory against Argentina (ranked ninth) was expected, since Pakistan had won against them in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia just two months ago. However, it was virtually outplayed by Great Britain which inflicted a convincing 4-1 defeat in the third match. Britain showed its overall supremacy by leading 4-0 before Pakistan scored a consolation goal at the fag end of the match.

The match against South Africa — ranked 12th — turned out to be a closely fought battle and Pakistan twice staged a great comeback to neutralise the lead before winning the game 5-4. However, if we take into the account the ranking of the two teams, Pakistan should have won by a bigger margin.

With seven points in its bag, all Pakistan needed was a win against Australia (ranked one) in order to secure its place in the semifinals. Unfortunately, the team’s performance at the Riverbank Venue was nothing short of an embarrassment. Australia showed its class and toyed with the ball, making the Pakistani team seem like amateurs and registered a comprehensive 7-0 victory. This was the worst defeat Pakistan hockey had ever faced in its 64-year Olympics history. While Australia had eight penalty corners to show its skillful onslaughts on Pakistan, the latter could not get even a single penalty corner which indicates the forwards’ lack of effective penetration in the match.

Finishing fourth in Pool A, Pakistan was up against the Pool B team South Korea (ranked number 6) for classification match and staged a comeback for a 3-2 win to secure seventh place. The team management would like to believe this as an improvement — we had finished eighth in Beijing Olympics. However, with this approach they are only fooling themselves.

In the six matches Pakistan played, it scored 12 goals and conceded 18 of which five goals were conversion of penalty corners through skipper Sohail Abbas and Mohammad Imran. Abbas and forward Abdul Haseem Khan were the joint top scorers with three goals each, Imran converted two penalty corners and one goal each was netted by forwards Rehan Butt, Waqas Sharif, Shafqat Rasool and left-half Wasem Ahmed.

The team’s goalkeeper Shah has come under severe criticism for his unsatisfactory performance. However, it would be totally unfair and unjustified to target only the goalkeeper and the fact remains that the team was underprepared and had not been coached and trained by the team management for such a mega event despite all the facilities provided by the PHF. The team’s failure is just as much the failure of the team management.