Pak hockey senior, junior, women teams’ engagements decided

KARACHI: Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) along with the national domestic calendar 2020 has also released the national and international activities calendar of the national men, women and junior teams for the year.

According to information received here, the events are Women’s Junior Asia Cup, training tour of Pak Juniors, 29th Sultan AzIan Shah Cup (Malaysia, April 11-18), training tour of Pak Seniors (June-July), Men’s Junior Asia Cup, and Men’s Asian Champions Trophy.

According to the PHF sources, the number of international matches for both senior and junior strings could also be increased keeping in mind the importance of international assignments.

The sources in the PHF said that despite hurdles and meager resources, PHF was determined to arrange 10-12 matches against other countries before the Junior Asia Cup 2020 in June in Bangladesh so that the young team could get match practice and a team combination could be established.

PHF has contacted some European countries whose borders are close to each other so that in one trip the national junior hockey team could play maximum number of matches with the junior string of these countries. France, Belgium, Germany, and Spain are the ideal countries in this regard and PHF is trying to arrange a tour of these countries in April and May.

The same policy has been adopted for the senior team but they do not have major events to play, so the PHF’s focus is on the junior team, the sources said.