KARACHI: Calling the World Series of Hockey (WSH) a good way of popularising hockey in Asia, Olympian Islahuddin Siddiqui has advised the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) to support the players participating in it.

“They are giving 40 million Indian rupees to the winners, 20 to the runners-up and 10 each to the third-position as well as the fourth position teams. The 58 players participating in this league from all over the world are also making between Rs4 to 6 million. Sure, the league carries major incentives and attraction for hockey players. They have hardly ever experienced something as big before. What can be better than that?” Islah, Pakistan’s most successful hockey captain to date, asked while speaking to Dawn on Thursday.

“I remember I was the Pakistan team’s manager/coach in 2007 when we were featuring in the Asia Cup in Chennai. That’s when Indian film actor Sunil Shetty flew all the way from Mumbai just to see me with a hockey proposal. He wanted to do something big for hockey and said he could find major sponsors if we agreed to a bilateral series with India with one match in Lahore and one in Chandigarh,” Islah informed.

“I liked his idea very much and even phoned our federation president of the time about it. But the federation put it off for later,” he continued.

“Shetty deserves all credit to have come up with such a big league. The WSH is the outcome of years of hard work by India to popularise hockey in Asia. We were more focussed on lucrative cricket leagues here but it is good to see so much money coming into hockey now. Hockey leagues were more of a European thing but it has now come to India, and this at a time when Asian morale in the game was going down,” Islah pointed out.

“I ask the current PHF officials have they been able to popularise the game like this in the four years that they have been at the helm of affairs here? Our hockey players don’t even have regular jobs. Have they been able to secure their future? Not having done any of that, I ask the PHF on what basis are they threatening the seven players, opting to play in the WSH, of suspension?” Islah fumed.

“Okay fine, Rehan Butt and Shakeel Abbasi have skipped camp but the five others there, namely, Zeeshan Ashraf, Adnan, Waseem Ahmed, Imran Warsi and Tariq Aziz are not even playing for Pakistan anymore. And with the PHF imposing restrictions on players above the age of 30 to play in domestic events, too, what future do they have left in hockey? The PHF has no right to stand in their way? It’s not as if they own them or anything,” he reasoned.

“My advice to the PHF would be to support these boys instead of stopping them from taking part in the WSH. In fact, they should write to the FIH to give them permission to play in this league. If they really mean well, they should look into safeguarding their players’ future instead of obstructing it,” Islah concluded.