Hockey tragedy

The top hockey-playing nations from around the globe will be featured in the 2023 Hockey World Cup to be held in the Indian cities of Bhubaneswar and Rourkela later this month. But record four-time World Cup champions Pakistan won’t be part of the 16-team field. The Pakistanis, who have been stuck in a downward spiral of failure and disappointment for decades, failed to qualify for the World Cup after finishing a dismal fifth position in the Asia Cup, which served as a qualifying event for the World Cup. While Pakistan are out, their old rivals India, Korea, Japan and Malaysia will be representing Asia in the World Cup where the real battle for the title will be fought between leading European contenders like Germany, Spain, Holland and Belgium and current World No 1 Australia. This is a really sad story for Pakistan who have been unable to qualify for major international events like the Olympic Games and World Cup in recent years. And a stunning decline for a country which was once regarded as the biggest superpower in the hockey world. Besides winning a record four World Cup titles, Pakistan have also won three Olympic golds and countless other international titles. But the drought which began in the 1990s soon after Pakistan’s 1994 World Cup triumph in Australia has worsened and now the national team is even unable to qualify for major tournaments. Winning a medal in such events seems impossible.

Pakistan’s fall in international hockey didn’t happen overnight. Lack of planning, incompetent and sometimes corrupt officials, shortage of funds and infrastructure were among the chief reasons behind the slump. While the rest of the world moved ahead and kept pace with fast-changing sport, Pakistan got stuck in the past and are now paying the price for it. There have been half-hearted attempts to lift the sport out of perpetual failure mode. Back in 2003, Pakistan roped in Dutch master coach Roelant Oltmans to revive their fortunes. The team showed massive improvement and finished on the medals podium in the Champions Trophy and made it to fifth position in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. But Pakistan opted against retaining Oltmans and the team’s performance graph dipped. Last year, Pakistan appointed Siegfried Aikman, another Dutchman, as national coach. Aikman, who masterminded Japan’s stunning title-winning triumph in the 2018 Asian Games as their national coach, had been trying to implement plans aimed at improving Pakistan’s performance at the international level. But lack of funds and poor policies of our hockey authorities have proved to be big stumbling blocks.

The situation is so bad that Aikman has left Pakistan over a dispute stemming from unpaid salaries and interference in hockey matters. It’s quite a bleak situation. The fact that Pakistan were unable to qualify even for an extended 16-nation World Cup speaks volumes about the stunning downfall of our hockey. It is feared that a similar story would be repeated for the 2024 Olympics in Paris and other major international events in the future unless proper remedial measures are planned and executed. The onus is on the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) and Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) to devise a comprehensive and long-term plan to lift national hockey. Half-baked measures won’t work.