Club-level hockey events to begin from this month

KARACHI: The PHF is preparing for various hockey events at district, division, province and national levels, ‘The News’ learnt on Tuesday.

It is expected that the events would be started by the end of this month.

The current PHF management has said Pakistan cannot regain its lost glory at the international level unless events were organised at the grassroots level.

Sources said that PHF was preparing its calendar for domestic events and that various tournaments would be organised for clubs across the country with the help of provincial associations and local and provincial governments.

“Hockey needs efforts from the PHF, provincial hockey associations, government and sponsors,” Olympian Naveed Alam told ‘The News’.

“They will jointly organise events from the end of this month,” said Naveed, PHF director development and domestic.

The major tournaments are DC Cup, inter-club hockey tournament, Commissioner Cup, CM Cup and PM Cup.

Naveed said that these events had not been organised for a long time because of which the pool of hockey players had shrunk.

The PHF has involved all district, divisional and provincial hockey associations, and local and provincial governments to organise these events, said Naveed.

Naveed said that in the PM Cup two teams from each region and event, including DC Cup and Commissioner Cup, and four teams from CM cup would participate.

The teams from Gilgit-Baltistan, AJK and the federal capital would also come to participate in the event but to establish their teams some work would have to be done, Naveed said.

He said that one of the main benefits of these events would be that all units of hockey would become active and registration of players would be done at one place.

About expenditure, Naveed said that involvement of local and provincial governments had been arranged in this regard. “All governments have to provide financial support to organise at least three main games and one of them is hockey,” he said.