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ISLAMABAD: Olympian Shahnaz Sheikh termed the current Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) as immature saying that it lacks timely-decisions and time-management.
Talking to APP on Tuesday, Sheikh said the real test of the national hockey team will be the Champions Trophy and the Olympic Games to be held in December 2011 in Delhi and July 2012 in London respectively.
“The forthcomimg inaugural Asian Champions Trophy in China next month is an easy one and I hope our team wins that.”
“In the past, from 1948 to 2000, we won 42 medals in mega events comprising 20 gold, 14 silvers and 8 bronze. But now as we see in the last ten years from 2000 to 2010, it has been the darkest period of our hockey and in it we won only 6 medals which includes 1 gold, 1 silver and 4 bronze,” he said.
Sheikh said the major reason for the team’s bad performance is due to the non-professional handling of the PHF affairs.
“To set goals for the future we should start hockey at grass-roots level from schools and colleges, which can be a source of providing a pool of players at the national level.”
Sheikh said that PHF has failed to create pool of players from hockey academies otherwise ageing players in the team should have retired a long time ago.
Talking about the team, Sheikh said, “If Pakistan performs well in the China tournamnet, then we have hope for good results in the coming Olympic games.”
“The inconsistency in the team’s performance is a big problem. The decision to exclude the senior players (Sohail Abbas, Rehan Butt and Salman Akbar) at this stage is not appropriate as it should have been taken after the Asian games so that the then young team could have got along well.”
Sheikh said that Pakistan has a unique record of winning approximately all inaugural tournaments like Asian games (1958), World Cup (1971), Champion Trophy (1978), Junior World Cup (1979) and Asia Cup (1985).
“No team of the world has such an extraordinary record in the history of hockey. And I hope our team wins this inaugural tournament as well,” he said.
“To me it seems that PHF does not understand the importance of this tournament and is considering this event as an experimental trip. But I think the win and loss of this event will have a great impact on the forthcoming tournaments Champion Trophy and Olympic Games 2012.”
“Pakistan should play like a unit as played in the Asian Games 2010 to win more tournaments,” Sheikh concluded.
