“The synthetic turf laid in 1987 at Qayyum Stadium, Peshawar has outlived its life span of 10 years, but still it hasn’t been replaced.
Several requests have been made to the government to replace it by a new one, but they have gone unheeded,” said an official of the provincial hockey association.
Imported from Germany at a cost of Rs 8 million, the turf has gathered dust and become slippery posing danger for players. Many of the players survived injuries in the Inter-regions and All-Pakistan Tariq Memorial tournament held this year.
Lack of official patronage and coverage by print and electronic media has caused the game to suffer immensely. There is no sponsorship available for hockey.
The provincial directorate of sports has allocated only Rs 40,000 for 2003-4 for the promotion of hockey in the province, an amount too little to cater to the desired needs.
Peshawar also held national junior hockey championship in January last year on the dilapidated turf and Inter-districts, Inter-regions and divisional level tournaments, during which the players faced enormous difficulties.
All formalities to lay new turf in Peshawar have been completed. Letter of Credit (LoC) has been opened and hopefully, the new turf would be laid by December this year, an official of the sports department said.
He said that the government had agreed to pay Rs 6 million for turf, saying that modern hockey was incomplete without installation of turfs.
NWFP has produced dozens of outstanding hockey players of international standard including Rashid Junior, late Qazi Muhib, Brig Hameedi, Musadiq Ali and Saeed Khan, but due to lack of facilities, the game has suffered a great setback.
Besides Peshawar, one turf was laid in Bannu, the town which has given many players to national team, in 2001 that is unplayable, because it had been laid by untrained people and Rs 5 million on which it had been spent, has gone down the drain.
In contrast, there are four turfs in Karachi, two in Lahore, another two in Faisalabad, and one each in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
Inadequate facilities and lack of proper playing grounds has been a major factor for the decline of hockey in the province.
A glaring example of this pathetic state of affairs can be gauged from the fact that out of 18 districts, affiliated with the provincial association, with the exception of Bannu there are no playing fields anywhere else.
The NWFP Hockey Association’s officials said that within their meagre resources, they organised Inter-regions tournament on Oct 1-6.
The association had borrowed about Rs 450,000 from one of its office-bearers to organize the event, but they contended as to how long could they keep borrowing money when there is no chance of returning it.
Ultimately, the game of hockey would suffer irreparable damage, because of the apathetic attitude of the government that is concentrating more on cricket.
It is the main cause that young people are not coming to play hockey. They prefer to play cricket and other games for the money as well as the glitz and glamour.
Not only the NWFP, but hockey has also suffered significantly at the national level also, which is evident from the fact that over the past several years, there has never been a worthwhile performance of the national team at international level.
Officials said that new techniques are being introduced in the game world over, but the bad situation in Pakistan, which a decade ago, won honours for the country, has been haunting the players as well as the organisers.
For instance, Holland has 300 synthetic turfs, Germany 200, Australia 80, Spain 30, whereas the total number of turfs in Pakistan are only 15.
Association’s officials argue that they do not find sponsors in Peshawar, because most of the multinational companies are based either in Karachi and Lahore and it was difficult to communicate with them.
The officials, however, appreciated the efforts of Mohammad Saeed Khan, the former IG Police and chairman NWFP Hockey Association for the promotion of the game, but urged the government to concentrate on the national game and save it from being completely ruined.