A few blips coming up on the radar screen of Pakistan sports in 2009 can also be termed as small triumphs like the hockey team's making it to next year's World Cup and the junior team's taking the Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) U-18 Junior Asia Cup title.
Pakistan's entry into the Golf World Cup thanks to two professionals Muhammad Munir and Muhammad Shabbir's coming third in the Omega Mission Hills World Cup Asian Qualifier was another reason to cheer. The feat suddenly reminded the people of this country that golf, too, is a sport played in Pakistan and in which we can make a name for ourselves just like cricket, hockey or squash.
Although it seemed impossible that any foreign team of any sports discipline would ever be willing to set foot in Pakistan after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March, there have been certain partings in the dark clouds looming over sports activities here. With exceptions here and there such as the Macau, Bangladesh and Maldives team's coming to Pakistan to feature in the World Volleyball qualifiers, the year drew to a close with relief in knowing that many countries had confirmed their participation to the Pakistan Boxing Federation (PBF) for the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto International Boxing Tournament (SBBIBT) to take place in Karachi from Jan 1-9, 2010. But let's begin this wrap up with the national sport - hockey.
Hockey
The year began with Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) looking for a direct berth in the World Cup by winning the Asia Cup. Logical enough ... yet not practical enough as they were still waiting for the newly-picked chief coach and assistant coach to report for duty, which turned out not to be so simple as the gentlemen in question were finding it extremely hard to get released by their department.
Olympian Ayaz Mahmood, their choice for chief coach, was working as Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) station manager in Moscow and couldn't even come eventually but the other, Olympian Kamran Ashraf, who was to work as assistant coach, did finally manage to get excused for national duty.
PHF's next choice for chief coach was the former Olympian goalkeeper Shahid Ali Khan who had been engaged as goal-keeping coach by Malaysian Hockey for the last three years.
The 11 hockey academies set up by the federation to train school children in the sport also started work early in the year. For this, the federation hired a foreign consultant, Wouter Tazelaar, on a two-year contract to prepare the syllabus and courses for the academy coaches.
Souring relations between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks resulted in the Federal Ministry of Sports disallowing Pakistan from taking part in a quadrangular hockey series in Chandigarh and Jalandhar, India, in January. The PHF received another setback when the Malaysian hockey team, set to tour Pakistan in the second week of February, also could not come after Malaysian Hockey Federation (MHF) turned down the invitation citing internal problems. So Pakistan entered the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia without much practice.
Still, armed with their new chief coach and Secretary Asif Bajwa taking on an added responsibility as the national team's manager, the green shirts braced themselves for the challenges ahead.
The five-nation Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia in April saw Zeeshan Ashraf being named captain of the national squad, a decision that's still holding up. The Cup was to be followed by the eighth Asia Cup also in Malaysia. The PHF was hoping to have the senior men, namely, Sohail Abbas, Waseem Ahmed, Rehan Butt and Salman Akbar, playing in foreign leagues, reporting back in the side for the Asia Cup.
With the Junior World Cup (June, Singapore) also looming over the federation's head, they replaced the team coach Qamar Ibrahim with Khwaja Mohammad Junaid with Danish Kaleem and Ahmad Alam remaining as assistant coaches. A busy programme was charted out for the colts with tournaments in Malaysia, Egypt and Germany before the big event. Announcing the junior squad saw Shafqat Rasool and Fareed Ahmed being upgraded to the senior squad for the Asia Cup.
The team finished fourth in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup. The senior players came back to join the squad for the Asia Cup and with a fine blend of experience and youth, the side performed beyond expectations. Pakistan reached the Asia Cup final in May but lost it to South Korea 0-1.
The loss while leading them to feature, for the first time, in the World Cup qualifiers later in the year in order to qualify for the World Cup, also earned them the seventh position in world rankings, a step up from the number eight slot that they acquired after the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
As for the juniors, they reached the final of the four-nation Invitational Junior Hockey Tournament in Malaysia but lost to India there. Their next assignment was in Egypt for the five-nation Junior Hockey Tournament, which they won. Next up was the Junior World Cup. Shafqat Rasool, after playing with the national team in the Asia Cup, was sent back to the junior side as its captain for the Jr World Cup. The team ended up fifth in the mega event.
The England series in July saw Pakistan replacing Kamran Ashraf with Shahbaz Jr as the assistant coach of the national team as he wasn't being able to do full justice to his job. The series was won by the green shirts 2-0 by winning two matches and drawing the third.
Training camp for the qualifiers in Lille, France, started in August. But before that the PHF decided on getting rid of the extra baggage by asking former team captain Mohammad Saqlain to retire. Later, another player midfielder Tariq Aziz had to be sent home from camp under suspicions of doping when the injured player took certain painkillers on his own in order to hide his injury. There was also some speculation regarding Sohail Abbas's having lost his magical touch but all such talk died down soon enough as there really wasn't any real replacement for the scorer of 280-plus goals.
Preparations for the qualifiers also included PHF's postponing the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy to be played in Pakistan around the time the team had to go play in the qualifiers. They also brought in a third coach Olympian Shafqat Malik to work with Shahbaz Jr under Chief Coach Shahid Ali Khan.
With no foreign team wanting to play here, the PHF kept the boys busy in several domestic events in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. One event the Junior Hockey Super League proved enormously significant when it managed to unearth the best talent from all over the country. The junior team comprising mostly boys picked from the Super League came home from Yangon, Myanmar, with the AHF U-18 Junior Asia Cup title.
In order to get the green shirts into more practice before the World Cup qualifiers, the federation planned a tour of Europe comprising three Tests in France, three in Poland and three against Belgium, which couldn't happen when the national team failed to get Schengen visas on time. The team eventually flew straight to Lille, France, on October 25, for the qualifiers without much practice. Thankfully they won the qualifiers in November to make it to next year's World Cup.
The success in the qualifiers saw the nation associating too many hopes with the team for its next assignment, the Champion's Challenge Cup-I, another qualifier but for the 2010 Champions Trophy, an event that Pakistan started but hasn't been able to play in due to its bad show at other events throughout the year. But although Pakistan made it to the final of the event played in Salta, Argentina, in December, they lost to New Zealand by 1-3 to sit out the third Champion's Trophy in a row.
Squash
It was for the second consecutive time that the Pakistan junior squash team competing in the British Junior Open Squash Championship in Sheffield, England, returned home empty handed, prompting the greatest squash player of all times Jahangir Khan to say that the players embarrassed Pakistan before the whole world with their poor performance.
This was followed by another controversy started by their team coach Faheem Gul about the possibility of the country's leading junior squash players Waqar Mehboob and Shoaib Hasan having deliberately thrown their matches at the event. Saying that, he also announced that the only female player in the team Maria Toor, who participated in the U-19 category, was overweight, a problem that he thought kept her from making an impact.
But the debate cooled off after even senior players like Aamir Atlas and Farhan Mehboob refused to train under coach Faheem Gul, saying that he had a penchant for creating splits between players.
Three Pakistanis - Aurangzeb Mehmud, Farhan Zaman and Maria Toor - reached the last-eight stage of the World Junior Squash championships in Chennai, India.
As many international invitational tournaments had to be postponed because of the participants' reluctance to visit Pakistan due to security reasons, these events staged later on only featured Pakistani players.
Retired from the court for 16 years now, Jahangir Khan still hasn't lost his fans and admirers all over the world proof of which was his receiving an honorary citizenship of Houston, Texas, in the US. He was honoured along with Australia's Geoff Hunt in November, too, during the course of the men's World Open in Kuwait.
Although he couldn't win the event, Aamir Atlas gave the nation some cause to cheer when he registered victory over World No 1 Gregory Gaultier in the Qatar Classic Open. Aamir and Farhan also did well in the final major event of the year, the Saudi International Squash, in Al-Khobar by managing to reach its second round.
Yet the year ended on a disappointing note for both players with Aamir Atlas slipping to number 23 from the 19th slot and Farhan being relegated to 34 from number 18 in the PSA Men's World Squash Rankings.
Tennis
No guesses for who created the most waves in tennis for Pakistan this year, too.
Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi played in Pakistan's win over Oman in the Davis Cup which they won 4-1.
Next up he defeated Australia's Chris Guceione in straight sets in the first round of Shimadzu Japan Indoor World Tennis Championship in Kyoto, Japan, but lost in the second round due to an ankle injury. Still he claimed the doubles title of the same championship with partner M. Slanar.
Partnering R. Bopanna in the Bangkok Challenger, the duo reached the semi-finals but lost in the final.
Bopanna and Aisam also reached the semis of the Korat Challenger but lost in the final. The year also saw Pakistan's tennis ace qualifying for the main round of the Wimbledon doubles when he paired up with India's Prakash Amritraj.
In the US Open, Aisam partnering with Jarkko Nieminen of Finland, won the first round but went down in the second.
But saving the best for last, Qureshi with his partner James Cerretani of the United States defeated World No 1 Roger Federer and his partner Marco Chiudinelli in straight sets at the Basel Open Doubles. The final score was 6-4, 6-3.
Qureshi and Bopanna also teamed up for both Challengers in Aachen and Helsinki, winning both titles.
The year's successes brought the player's world doubles ranking to number 59.
The other players with notable performances in 2009 include junior tennis star Faizan Khurram, who with his Danish partner Daniel moved into the semis of the ITF Junior Championship in Dubai.
Also a senior player Sahib Wali won the 55-plus singles title in the Dubai Open Seniors World Ranking Tennis Championship in Dubai, an event participated by 20 countries.
Football
The year in football began with the Pakistan Football Federation's (PFF) finally managing to tie up all the loose ends regarding the 10-acre land for the FIFA Goal Project II in Karachi's Hawkesbay. The construction of the mega project that is said to change the destiny of the emerging talent of Karachi is yet to begin though.
Acquiring suitable land for the project resulted in a tiff between the Sindh Football Association's (SFA) Zone South and the PFF. The hot words and hurled accusations by the South Zone officials at the PFF officials resulted in plenty of bad blood between the two, which also saw the banning of several people from football related activities in Karachi.
Hiring a foreign coach to prepare strong Pakistan sides for the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) championship in November and the 11th South Asian Federation (SAF) Games in early 2010 were also big on PFF's agenda. In February, after several considerations, they finally settled on hiring the much-recommended Euefa-pro coach George Kottan of Austria for the job. And thus began the team's downward slide.
The coach's first test, the Prime Minister Cup in Nepal, in March saw the team crashing out of competition after drawing 1-1 with Bangladesh's Arambagh Krira Sangha and losing to Nepal Reds 0-1 and that too through an own goal. The most shameful reality was that this was Pakistan's national side that played so badly against mere clubs.
But the failure in Nepal saw the coach complaining that he was not happy with team selection, which according to him was all done without his consent. Kottan's outburst prompted the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) which had been extending monetary help to the PFF in order for them to be able to pay his salary to demand an explanation from the federation about why they hadn't sought the coach's consent when picking the team.
Afterwards, the coach also seemed unhappy with the ground in Lahore and Islamabad so camp in preparation for the AFC Challenge Cup (Group 'D') in Sri Lanka in April was shifted to Karachi. But in doing so the PFF due to its fight with Zone South, snubbed the authorities, who had control of the best football stadiums in the country such as the Peoples Sports Complex and the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) Stadium, by holding the camp at a ground in Korangi where they didn't even have proper dressing rooms.
Pakistan failed to move to the next round to be played in India in 2010 when they beat Brunei 6-0, and drew matches against hosts Sri Lanka (2-2) and Chinese Taipei (1-1) in the AFC Challenge Cup (Group 'D').
Again due to being out of favour, players from Karachi's Lyari never caught the foreign coach's eye, who decided to head for England to scout for fresh talent in order to improve the national side. The tour resulted in his including some six England-based players in the team. But the move was seen by many as the coach's way of finding a shortcut instead working at grooming talent here.
The George Kottan-coached side also returned from Thailand after losing all their three matches there. But the PFF, while playing down the embarrassing results, said that the Thailand tour was as just a practice session for the Pakistan team for the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) championship at year's end.
Pakistan were favourites at the SAFF championship in Bangladesh in December but they failed to go beyond the initial round. While citing their grievances with Coach Kottan, Pakistan's disheartened captain Mohammad Essa and vice captain Jafar Khan both announced their retirements from international events.
The year ended with the federation making tall claims about the Pakistan Under-23 team being good enough to be able to defend its title in the South Asian Games. They are looking to complete a hat-trick in the event staged for early next year. Meanwhile, as camp was set up in preparation for the event got under way, the coach left on his month-long leave.
Golf
After making it to the World Cup by ending up third in the Omega Mission Hills World Cup Asian Qualifier in August, Muhammad Munir and Muhammad Shabbir's couldn't maintain the same performance in the actual World Cup in China in November.
Volleyball
The Pakistan volleyball team remained unbeaten in the World Volleyball qualifiers that were held at the Liaquat Gymnasium in Islamabad. They beat Macau, Bangladesh and Maldives to reach the second round of the qualifiers to be held in Iran.
Judo
Pakistan recorded the third position in the eighth Azad University International Judo Championship in Tehran, Iran.
