ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary panel on Tuesday was briefed by several former Olympians on ways for improving the declining standards of hockey.

The national game, which has seen a sharp decline over the last 15 years, when Pakistan won the Asian Games in 2010.

Perturbed by the depressing situation, the Senate Standing Committee on Inter-provincial Coordination recently took up the issue. The main committee had referred the matter to a sub-committee to examine the causes behind the poor state of Pakistan hockey.

The sub-committee, headed by Senator Walid Iqbal and attended by Senators retired Lt Gen Salahuddin Tirmizi got a detailed briefing from ex-Olympians Manzoor Junior, Khawaja Junaid, Khalid Bashir and Salim Nazim.

Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) secretary Shahbaz Ahmed also briefed the committee about the goals and challenges being faced by federation.

The Olympians slammed the incumbent PHF hierarchy for national team’s pathetic performance in recent times. Khalid said that the federation has been facing serious corruption charges, while alleging that PHF was formed on political basis and it received huge funding during the last three years but failed to deliver.

Manzoor pointed out that performance of national team had remained shameful during the last three years despite more than Rs800 million being spent by the PHF, adding during 2017-18, India defeated Pakistan nine times.

“Such things hurts us,” Manzoor said and added that PHF has only three things to its credit — lack of interest, mismanagement and inappropriate utilisation of funds.

Manzoor stressed that there is need for paying focus on domestic hockey.

“The domestic hockey has collapsed and we did not see any major national event being held during the last few years,” he said.

Junaid questioned PHF for not improving the situation.

“What steps have they taken during their tenure? Nothing, as we are at the same place where we were several years ago,” he said.

Salim said that the interest of PHF management could be gauge from this fact that Faisalabad 1 which is a nursery of hockey which has produced 11 Pakistan captains and 39 international players — is still lacking Astroturf at its main ground.

He said the PHF, which receives funds from federal and provincial governments has also been providing maximum funding by Pakistan Sports Board, but its performance is far lower than a small federation like handball which receive a meagre grant of Rs700,000 per year.

The Olympians also raised questions on the electoral college of PHF, alleging that current management is just there to grab power, deprived many genuine clubs from participating in elections.

The convener of meeting Senator Walid Iqbal, whose knowledge about hockey impressed the participants, efficiently conducted the proceedings and gave chance to all concerned person to give recommendations. When the Olympians levelled corruption charges, the chairman directed them to submit whatever evidences they have in support of their claims before the committee in the next couple of days.

Earlier, Shahbaz briefed the committee about the efforts being made by him and PHF president retired Brig Khalid Sajjad Khokhar to bring improvement at the playing level.

The ex-Pakistan captain lamented shortage of resources are major reasons behind the decline of the sport.

To a query, Shahbaz said that there are still hopes for Pakistan to participate the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as the national team could qualify after showing good performance in qualification round.

IPC ministry secretary Akbar Durrani also briefed the committee about the reasons and way forward for improvement, while also stating a forensic audit of PHF is underway.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2019