KARACHI: Olympian Islahuddin Siddiqui has a bit of advice for the Pakistan hockey team and officials that he hopes would help in improving “understanding, combination and coordination” within the team members before the 2012 London Olympics.
“Looking at the team’s progress, especially after the Asian Games, I no longer want to remain in the opposition. I just want to give the federation some advice as I believe in the capability of our boys,” said Islah, the most successful hockey captain of Pakistan to date while speaking to Dawn on Friday.
“I don’t want to debate on whether we played well or not in Azlan Shah. What I know is that we didn’t win there,” he said, adding: “Reaching the final was great but I had been saying from the very beginning that we should win the event as the other countries there were fielding young sides whereas Pakistan was playing full strength.”
About Pakistan’s Azlan Shah squad, he pointed out: “We did not take a team of juniors for Azlan Shah as is being said. It was really the same set of ‘juniors’ that we see again and again from the pool of 30 to 35 players that the PHF picks the boys from. They are more like seniors who, provided they are physically fit until the Olympics, are fine as we already know their worth.
“So it is time to give a chance to the real juniors, the new boys, during the forthcoming tour of Europe and test the new combination in the Champions Trophy for the Olympics.”
Bringing logic into the matter, Islah said: “Frankly, except for Great Britain and Australia we were above in world rankings from the rest of the participating teams in Azlan Shah such as New Zealand, Malaysia, Korea and India. And we lost to both Great Britain and Australia.
“If you look at Europe, the stronger teams there are Germany, Holland, Spain and Belgium while Great Britain is somewhere at the bottom. Therefore, losing to them [Britain] meant losing to entire Europe.
“Then it is also being said that we lost the final due to too much missing, which mostly happened during the regulation time and not really in the extra time. So had we not missed out on those opportunities, there never would have been extra time and we would have won the final,” he reasoned.
“The federation has been unable to fix this ‘missing’ problem ever since its current management took over,” he noted.
“And why is it that the coaches talk about trying to overcome weaknesses during camp without mentioning what these weaknesses actually are. Why do we get to learn about them after the tournaments?” he wondered aloud.
“The problem can, however, be overcome by holding bigger and more camps as such weaknesses can be removed with combined training during camps and not really during the contests,” he explained.
Coming back to the future, Islah said: “The team will soon be starting preparations for their European tour but the federation should now be more focused on building a [strong] team for the 2012 Olympics.
“Changing two players before one event and another couple after the next at this stage won’t help at all. They better come up with a winning combination and stick with it until the Olympics in order to promote better understanding and coordination within the team,” Islah emphasised.
About the Champions Trophy, the team’s rehearsal event before the Olympics, he said it will be a little easier this time as the eight participating teams are to be broken into two pools.
“Pakistan just have to concentrate on winning two matches in their pool, which will take them to the semi-finals. From there they will take on one of the other two teams from the other pool to reach the final and give their all,” concluded the winning captain of the first Champions Trophy, World Cup and the Asian Games in 1978.