Poor show at Asian Games: Probe need of hour to fix responsibility on stakeholders

A heated, and seemingly unending, debate has been going on since the conclusion of the 19th Asian Games as to what has gone wrong and who is actually responsible for the unprecedentedly poor performance of the Pakistan contingent at the four-yearly event.

The green flag-career just managed three medals (one silver and two bronze), less than medals even won by war-ravaged Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Macau. Coming straight to the point, every stakeholder, someone somewhere, has some role in this systematic downfall. The biggest problem lies within our society where sports especially for the children has never been a priority of parents. The parents here don’t want their children become an Asian Games athlete or a future runner, shooter or a hockey, badminton or table tennis player. Hence these parents hardly take their children to grounds, courts and swimming pools or even for a tough workout that could help build up their physique.

Unlike other sports-loving countries where parents spend their weekends with children at playgrounds, in Pakistan no such practice can be seen even in big cities. Whatever talent comes to the fore only surfaces through mere fluke, chance or luck.

Say if Arshad Nadeem would not have been a brilliant brick-thrower from the ground to the third floor, no one could have realised how strong his muscles are.

The second biggest fault lies with the multinational companies which are minting millions of rupees from the ordinary consumers but do absolutely nothing to help the society flourish at any level in return. No concrete role these multinationals have played in building up the future generations by sponsoring one game or the other. In western and Asian countries these multinationals are getting tax waivers in return for supporting healthy activities by sponsoring sports and other activities at grassroots level.

These multinationals can help promote the overall culture of the society by generating activities which ultimately groom future generations by building their physiques.

No doubt the fault also lies with the government departments/federations sports departments directly responsible to evolve a specific strategy to spot and then groom the available talent.

Almost thirteen years back we returned from the Asian Games hosted by the same Chinese city with three gold medals (women cricket, hockey and squash) winning eight in total. This time the fall is so worrying that even cricket (both men and women) disappointed the nation as both men and women’s teams lost miserably even from the teams like Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Cricket, unlike other sport disciplines, has no financial issues yet the poor management and team preparations for such a big event were never up to the mark, resulting in extremely poor results at the Games.

Hockey’s fortunes in the country already hit rock bottom with the federation officials’ least interested to mend their ways. Rather officials looked more interested in having a good time at the expense of the game’s development. Not even deputing a proper coach with the team and leaving everything to the fate was the biggest crime ever committed by the federation. It was like jumping from the sky and expecting a miracle to happen to land safely on the ground.

No federation/department in the country is well equipped to confront the modern sports challenges. No concrete efforts have been made on any front to reverse the overall plight of the national sports.

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has recently been given billions of rupees under the youth sports development initiative programme to promote sports in the educational institutions but all the finances seem going to waste.

In the absence of a realistic roadmap and handling of the programme by raw and disinterested officials have already put a big question mark over the effective handling and execution of the project.

Sports federations have often been seen blaming the lack of finances and non-cooperative attitude from the multinationals as the reason for not initiating development programmes. These surely are the biggest hurdles country’s sports are facing.

The policy-makers, even those attached with the sport’s youth development funds never realized about evolving a system where these funds could have been utilized in a much better way with the help of active federations.

Just not long back, Shaza Fatima Khawaja was empowered to decide on funds utilization. The former advisor to the PM never bothered to take stakeholders in confidence or for that matter made efforts to get their suggestions for effective utilization of these funds. The result being that no concrete measures so far are in order to help develop future athletes which should have been the main purpose of this programme.

Country’s top sports departments like Wapda, services sports boards, HEC and Sui Gas (Northern and Southern) have huge sports funds but mostly their focus is restricted to the national level. Their high point is to win National Games and a national event which basically shows the limitations of respective officials’ mindset/horizons.