LAHORE: Former Olympian Khawaja Zakauddin on Friday suggested the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) to check the biased attitude of the selectors, coaches and managers if it wants to genuinely resurrect the sport.

Zakauddin, while talking to Dawn, also urged the PHF to arrange more international activities for both junior and senior teams to keep them as busy as possible in order to revamp the dying sport.

“It is a great disappointment for every hockey lover and the Pakistan fans that the country’s team won’t be seen in the hockey competition at the Rio Olympics,” he lamented. “We learnt nothing from the debacle in the [2014] World Cup and now we have also failed to qualify for the Olympics which is so shameful.”

A member of the national side that won gold medal for the first time at Rome Olympics in 1960 and a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, Zakauddin was also the head coach when Pakistan clinched their third and last Olympic gold in 1984 at Los Angeles under the captaincy of Manzoor Junior.

He observed that lack of merit is the key factor of hockey decline in the country. “One of the main reasons behind our debacle is that the coaches, selectors and managers have been all biased in their approach and prefer their favourites while making selections and paying no heed to merit,” he pointed out. “This attitude [of the officials] in the past ruined the game and if we continue to indulge in this dirty practice, there will be no hope for our survival.

“Now is the time to move on with the modern world where these kinds of violation of merits stand nowhere. Otherwise, there will come a time when no one will even talk about hockey let alone play it,” he warned.

To improve the standards, Zakauddin suggested, the selectors must pick the team purely on merit and provide maximum international exposure to the players. “This is the only way to build an experienced team. The PHF should divert maximum funds towards the international activities if they want to build a strong outfit for the qualifying round for the next World Cup,” he said.

“We have to do lot of investment in hockey. Just take a look what the Indians have been doing. They have taken major steps to arrest the decline by making heavy investment. That’s why they have staged a comeback in the mainstream of world hockey quickly,” Zakauddin stressed.

In the end, Zakauddin urged the federal and provincial governments to also support the PHF and asked the federation to fully utilise the funds for the game’s improvement.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016