LAHORE: Pakistan’s captain Rizwan Senior and some other leading hockey players failed to impress with their physical fitness level as the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) on Monday announced central contracts for only 16 players instead of 20, according to the initial plan.

“The PHF will not compromise on the fitness level of the players, so following [this] strict policy it has given no relaxation to any senior player and even captain Rizwan Senior has failed to earn a place in any category of the central contract,” PHF secretary Asif Bajwa, flanked by chief selector Manzoor Junior and head coach Khawaja Junaid, said at a press conference in Lahore on Monday while announcing the names of 16 players, who earned places in the four categories of the PHF contract.

Besides Rizwan, other Pakistan players who failed to impress with their fitness level include goalkeeper Amjad Ali, mid-fielder Azfar yaqoob, Rana Waheed and forward Rana Sohail.

Asif said the policy of awarding the central contract should be a role model for other federations.

“The decision [of giving central contract] was taken to involve the players in such activities in order to help them maintain fitness level even at home as [currently] there is a dearth of hockey tournaments due to Covid-19 scenario,” Asif said at the presser.

“If Covid-19 permits, hopefully there will be a good number of international activities and this [PHF] decision of central contract would keep the players fit before the start of international calendar.”

The secretary also welcomed the statement of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is also the PHF patron-in-chief, for mentioning hockey in his appearance on TV while answering a question of general public, and hoped the PM would take every possible step to promote sports culture in the country.

To a question, Asif said India’s men and women teams had qualified for the semi-finals of the ongoing Olympics in Tokyo, just because India had invested a lot in hockey during the last ten years.

“The annual Indian budget is around Rs5 billion; if the PHF gets just 25 per cent of this we can do wonders at the international level,” Asif said.

Their players, Asif added, were highly paid even at the domestic level.

And when asked what the federal government gave to the PHF as annual grant in the last fiscal year, Bajwa disclosed it was mere Rs3.5 million.

And when asked if only fitness level of the players would be considered for national team selection, while ignoring the importance of their skills level, Bajwa said first they had to show at least satisfactory physical fitness level then their skills would be taken into account.

“Manzoor Junior and Khawaja Junaid did a very good job in conducting the fitness test along with [trainer] Abid,” the PHF secretary reckoned.

Giving the details, the secretary said only five players earned place in category ‘A’, two in ‘B’ and five in ‘C’. Four players are also included in newly introduced Emerging category. This category was not included in the initial plan but after finding only 12 players whose physical fitness level was not top-notch but only satisfactory, the PHF decided to introduce the Emerging category to encourage new talent.

Each contracted player in category ‘A’ will earn Rs50,000 monthly, Rs40,000 in category ‘B’, Rs30,000 will be pocketed by every category ‘C’ player while Rs20,000 have been allocated for every member of the Emerging category.

According to Asif, 32 players were invited for the training camp and those who could not get the central contract would be given two more chances to come with required fitness level. “If they fail to avail the remaining two chances, new players will be called [to the camp].”

The PHF will hold the fitness test at the end of every month and then it will make the changes in the categories on the basis of fresh reports of the players’ physical fitness level.

List of PHF contracted players:

Category ‘A’: Umar Bhutta, Mubashir Ali, Ijaz Ahmad, Abu Bakar, Ali Shan

Category ‘B’: Tazeem-ul-Hasan, Moeen Shakil

Category ‘C’: Waqar, Abdullah (goalkeepers); Aqeel Ahmed, Umair Sattar, Roman Khan

Emerging category: Rizwan Ali, Obaidullah, Navid Alam, Danish

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2021