Inter-club hockey to be marred by lack of synthetic turfs

KARACHI: PHF is going to organise inter-club hockey championship from this week in 144 districts across the country but more than fifty percent of the matches will be played on grass or even mud grounds, ‘The News’ has learnt.

The pathetic condition of hockey’s infrastructure is due to the negligence of past office bearers.

Even in cities like Gojra, Shaikhupura and Faisalabad, which have produced prominent hockey players, there are no synthetic turfs for inter-club matches.

Gojra is famous in the entire hockey world as it has produced more than 100 international players, including Olympians, but around 22 clubs will compete on grass.

There used to be an austro turf but it was not maintained and has been taken back by the people who owned the land.

Gojra has produced many superstars, including Manzoor-ul-Hasan, Rasheed-ul-Hasan, Tahir Zaman, Khalid Basheer and Shahbaz Junior.

Coaches Aslam Rodha and Iqbal Bali of Gojra produced a number of hockey stars.

Shaikhupura has also produced dozens of international hockey players, including Pakistan captain Jahangir Butt, Asad Malik, and Naveed Alam. But there is no synthetic turf even there.

There are cities which have austro turfs, but matches cannot be held there because of lack of water and power. These include Mardan and Hyderabad.

PHF’s director domestic and development Naveed Alam admitted that it was not possible to organise all matches on synthetic turfs.

The event will, however, help PHF identify such places and according to PHF’s vision 2020, these issues will be addressed gradually, he said.

He said that PHF had already planned to install more than 100 mini and full synthetic turfs across the country.

Naveed said that PHF would identify places where synthetic turfs are needed.

In various parts of south Punjab, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and FATA also, inter-club matches will be played on grass.