Once considered as a force to be reckoned with in the world, the Pakistan hockey team faces a Herculean task to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. The team has reached Antwerp, Belgium, where the Hockey World League semi-finals begin on Saturday (today).

According to schedule, 10 teams that are vying for honours in the competition have been drawn into two groups.

Group ‘A’ comprises Pakistan, Poland, Australia, India and France while group ‘B’ include Belgium, Ireland, China, Malaysia and Great Britain.

Pakistan meets Poland on June 20, Australia on June 24, India on June 26 and France on June 28. The league will be followed by knock out round.

This is the third time that Pakistan will be making their appearance in Olympic qualifiers. History was created when after failing to earn direct passage for the 2000 Sydney Games, Pakistan qualified by finishing runners-up at Osaka. Spain won the qualifiers by getting the better of Pakistan 3-2 in the final.

In a repeat performance, Pakistan was compelled to travel to Madrid, Spain, to play qualifying event for the 2004 Athens Olympics where they seized third place by defeating India 4-2 in the play-off for the 3rd-4th positions.

Pakistan was, however, lucky to earn direct ticket for the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics.

After capturing back-to-back silver medals at the Incheon Asian Games and the Bhubaneswar Champions Trophy last year, the green shirts, instead of being rewarded, have gone through severe mental agony due to financial constraints of the PHF.

Though the PHF made a lot of hue and cry in this regard, no soul was moved in the corridor of power and the games controlling body had to beg in public as they had done before to materialise the preparatory Australian and South Korean trips.

In this backdrop, the morale of players was quite low which was visible in the twin events. According to sketchy results available on websites, Pakistan lost the opener to Australia by tennis score (0-6), beat South Korea 4-1 and suffered 2-4 loss at the hands of New Zealand at Hobart.

With the exception of first test, the PHF did not release the results of other games played against South Korea. However, information gathered by Dawn show that the series was marred by umpiring issues.

The government which is carrying out audit of the PHF accounts has eventually bailed the team out by releasing Rs110million for featuring in the qualifiers.

It is pertinent to mention that Pakistan had already missed the Hockey World Cup at The Hague last year. Hockey is the only hope of Pakistan at the Olympics and the government should give it priority by setting aside ample funds so that the issue that has cropped up this time could not be repeated again.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2015

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