Last week, Pakistan hockey team left Lahore for India via Wagah Border to participate in the premier event -- World Cup -- being held in Bhubaneswar from Nov 28 to Dec 16.

The team was in high spirit ahead of the big event after the cash-striped Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) cleared their dues of amounting to Rs15 million just a day before the departure. Players remained upset for weeks after not getting the dues of their last tours of Oman and and the World Cup. After the federal government turned a deaf ear to the PHF’s demand for a Rs80 million grant before the World Cup, the PPP government in Sindh came to help the team and Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah released Rs100 million.

The performance of the team has been in decline since winning the World Cup last time in 1994 in Sydney. The national team got boost ahead of this year mega event after being declared a joint winner of the Asian Champions Trophy with India in Oman last month. Pakistan have won the World Cup for four times in the past. Now, it has been without any big world title to its name for the last 24 years.

This time, special functions were arranged in the honour of the team. Leading singers Ustad Shafqat Amanat Ali Khan, Ali Zafar and Waris Baig visited the training camp to improve the morale of the team enormously.

Pakistan captain Rizwan Senior said the induction of Tauqir Dar and Hasan Sardar in the team management turned the team into a family and that was a pleasant change and much-needed change before the World Cup.

“In my 10 years career, I haven’t seen such a family like team management, as every player is feeling his responsibility,” he said.

Pakistan will play its first match against Germany, and then against Malaysia and the last group match against Holland. The national team was accorded a warm welcome by the Indian Punjab authorities, when it entered India through the Wagah Border.

After a decade, the Sports Board Punjab (SBP) came back to its original track of holding U-16 events, both in boys and girls sections. In the last 10 years, the SBP has been organising youth festivals, completing the political agenda of the government to attract youth, but ignoring its original role at the grassroots level.

In the past, the SBP used to organise U-16 events for girls and U-14 for boys in almost 25 sports. At the end of competitions at the provincial level, there was the turn of holding inter-provincial competitions in as many 25 games at the federal level by the Pakistan Sports Board. And the top players of Punjab were awarded monthly stipends from Rs2,000 to 3,000 to further groom their talent. SBP Director General Nadeem Sarwar told Dawn that he was going to revive the old system at U-16 and U-14 levels to hunt talent at the grassroots level and then to field them in international competitions. He said all possible measures would be taken to ensure the players get their incentives directly from the SBP. This is a pleasant change. Earlier, Mr Sarwar has refused to entertain the request of the Punjab Olympic Association to allow the use of sports infrastructure for holding the 9th inter-school and collegiate games last week. Now, he has allowed the association to go ahead with their plans. He said permission was refused first because the association did not submit their vouchers of the funds of Rs6 million given to it by the Punjab government for the participation in the last Inter-provincial Games held in Peshawar this year. When he warned the association that it submit the detail in a given deadline they did so and also returned unspent Rs1200,000 to the Punjab government. Once the accounts were settled, the association was allowed to the infrastructure.

When told that players suffered the most in such standoff, Mr Sarwar admitted the fact and added the SBP welcomed all sports organisers to hold activities throughout the year. Hopefully the grounds in Punjab will remain busy throughout the year providing facilities to the players.

The SBP intends to increase rates slightly for associations for using the infrastructure. The increase for private schools and colleges, however, will be bigger. When asked associations had no financial resources to bear even a nominal increase, the SBP boss said it was essential because the charges were not increase for the last many years.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2018