Asian Champions Trophy: Three senior players not attending training camp, PHF takes no action

KARACHI: Three senior players have not yet joined the training camp that has begun in Lahore for the preparation of Asian Champion Trophy.

Captain Rizwan Senior is participating in Holland’s league. Interestingly, midfielder Rashid Mahmood is representing Navy in a domestic event, having come home after leaving the Holland league, but has ignored the national training camp.

It has been learnt that Rashid will return to Holland after the domestic event ends. He will not play for Pakistan in the Asian Champions Trophy in Oman because his club is not ready to give him further leave.

Shafqat Rasool, another senior player, is also not participating in the training camp. It has been learnt that he is not interested in playing the Asian Champions Trophy. It is pertinent to mention here that the entire team had protested before going for the Asian Games against the PHF’s failure to pay their salaries and other dues. All the players had threatened that if their salaries were not paid, they would not participate in the Asian Games.

The caretaker government did not give a single penny to PHF for Asian Games. The PHF itself managed to pay the players and the officials and sent them to Indonesia, where they were defeated in all important matches.

Pakistan failed to score a single goal against Japan in the semi-final and also lost against India in the fourth position match. Due to their experience of professional hockey in European countries, the PHF cannot afford to drop any of these three players, sources said.

Inducting junior players was considered but the idea was dropped because coach Roelant Oltmans and others in the team management did not want to take the risk. They said the junior players were too inexperienced to take on European teams.

PHF is preparing them for junior World Cup. Some senior players are to retire after World Cup in India in December. That would be the right time to induct the juniors, it was argued.

The PHF has avoided taking any strict action against the three players because it has developed the senior and junior teams after a lot of efforts which might go waste in case of a rebellion by the senior players.