Imran guiding junior penalty corner strikers

KARACHI: Pakistan hockey captain Muhammad Imran is helping in the preparation of the junior outfit and sharing his expertise with the penalty corner strikers on the request of the PHF.
Imran is currently Pakistan’s best penalty corner striker and has scored 193 international goals.
He is back from participating in professional leagues abroad and as the senior team has no assignment these days the PHF is using his expertness for polishing the juniors’ drag flickers.
Sources said that he was working with Abu Bakar, Mubashir and Junaid Khan.
He told ‘The News’ that both penalty corner strikers were improving and their conversion ratio had risen to between 60 and 70.
He elaborated that both players’ dragging speed was fast but releasing of the ball was a bit slow on which he was working.
The junior hockey team has played only two practice matches during the camp training and all three goals were scored on penalty corners.
He said that the third striker Junaid had also good abilities in the variations of the penalty corner. The trio would be the future of Pakistan, he added. Imran said Pakistan would not have much problem in penalty corners in future.
He said he was not much interested in coaching right now and wanted to continue to play for Pakistan.
He said that he was waiting to participate in the next national championship, which is likely to be held in December.
Imran said that Pakistan junior team was playing after a one-year gap, so it would take some time to strengthen and convert it into a winning combination.
“Looking at how PHF is giving attention to them and how players are training, I can say that they will emerge as a powerful team in near future,” he said.
Imran said that he wanted to complete the double century of goals. He is already the second in the list of scorers for Pakistan.
He said that he was keenly waiting the next international assignment of the senior team.
PHF is likely to finalise the details of the senior team’s assignments after departure of the juniors to Malaysia on October 7.