KARACHI Keeping their recent performances in view, the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has renewed the contracts of 19 senior team players along with presenting a Rs10,000 stipend to eight junior boys who showed fine performance in the recently-concluded 1st Youth Olympics in Singapore where the junior team ended up with a silver medal.
Doing so the PHF has ignored penalty-corner specialist fullback Sohail Abbas, for obvious reasons, along with five others including goalkeeper Nasir Ahmed, forward Abdul Qayyum Dogar and halfback Zeeshan Ali. Sohail Abbas, whose contract was suspended by the PHF back in July soon after he snubbed the federation and selectors by failing to report for the training camp held in preparation for the senior team's tour of Europe while preferring to play league in Bangladesh, has now as good as been discarded by the PHF. But when PHF Secretary Asif Bajwa was contacted by Dawn on Friday to inquire what the others had done to not be considered this time, he pointed towards their past three months' performance.
“The PHF is offering performance-based incentives only and not even getting the selectors' nod for the Commonwealth Games team other than their not impressing with their game in the past three months' events, the boys not given the contracts this time didn't make it to our front lot.
“We keep reviewing the past three months' performances of our players in order to consider them for these contracts and they just weren't in the system this time around,” he added.
“Performance is everything here as we have proved by also offering a package of Rs10,000 a month to eight of our junior guys who played brilliantly in the Youth Olympics last month,” he explained.
The contracts follow the same system as those last awarded to 25 players on May 3, meaning they are again for a period of four months with three main categories.
Category 'A' that has seven players, namely, forwards Rehan Butt, Shakeel Abbasi, Waqas Sharif, fullbacks Zeeshan Ashraf, Mohammad Imran, halfback Waseem Ahmad and goalkeeper Salman Akbar, will be paid Rs50,000 per month.
Category 'B' worth Rs40,000 a month comprises forwards Mohammad Zubair, Abdul Haseem Khan, Shafqat Rasool, Mohammad Rizwan, halfbacks Mohammad Rasheed, Fareed Ahmed and Mohammad Irfan while the Rs30,000 Category 'C' has been presented to forward Umar Bhutta, halfbacks Kashif Javed, Mohammad Tauseeq and Imran Shah.
Meanwhile, the eight junior team boys to receive Rs10,000 a month are Syed Kashif Shah, Mohammad Rizwan, Ali Shan, Mohammad Irfan, Arslan Qadir, Mohammad Zubair, Rana Umair and goalkeeper Mazhar Abbas.
