Umar Hayat refuses national coach job offer

KARACHI: A good opportunity to steer national squash coaching out of crisis has been lost by the authorities.

It has been learnt that Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) tried to hire former world number six Umar Hayat Khan as the national coach recently.

But the deal did not materialise due to various reasons.

“The federation contacted Umar Hayat through the current national coach Fazal Shah and asked him if he was interested in joining the federation as the national coach,” said a source while talking to ‘The News’.

“Later, Secretary PSF Tahir Sultan called Umar and invited him to Chaklala. He also talked about the contract details,” the source added.

The source added that Umar did not go to Chaklala .

Umar was ranked 6th in the world rankings in January 1990 and he was a member of the national team that won World Championships in 1985 and 1987. He is the son of former renowned national coach Umar Daraz Khan, who was the coach of the national team that won the World Team Championship in 1985.

“The salary of the position was the key issue as the federation could not afford to pay him the desired amount,” said the source.

No Pakistani coach has been able to win any Asian Squash Federation (ASF) award since 2007. In 2006 and 2007, Fahim Gul won ‘Coach of the Year’ award. Rehmat Khan won the award in 2004.

Ironically, PSF sacked Fahim, its only level-3 coach, a few years ago and now PSF is running its coaching system with the help of lower-level associate coaches hired on an interim basis.

Before Fahim, PSF had also sacked Jamshed Gul. “I can safely say that there is no qualified coach in the current coaching setup of PSF. No programme is being run,” said Jamshed while talking to ‘The News’.