Six prominent Pakistan hockey players, including former captains Rehan Butt and Shakeel Abbasi, have gone to India to play in the cash-rich, controversial World Series of Hockey (WSH). They have brought down on their heads the wrath of the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF). The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has announced a ban on all players of member countries who play in the league.
Lovers of the national sport should include their voice to former captain Olympian Islahuddin's to back the players and also to condemn the arrogance of the PHF and FIH who show once again that they care for their own status at the expense of the game and the players.
Football, Cricket and Hockey. We were once great in all three field sports. The preferred game of the masses is cricket but since hockey was the first to earn international fame for Pakistan by winning the Olympic gold medal, it was declared the National Game. There has not been consistent effort to maintain the greatness of Pakistan hockey. If the man heading the PHF happened to be a VIP and a true leader, then he took interest. The game progressed by fits and starts, reflecting the whim of the PHF president.
Eversince football became a professional sport the standard of that game improved phenomenally. It inspired professionalism in many other sports. But those who held the reigns of hockey in the country and internationally preferred to keep hockey at amateur level. If I am not mistaken, Hockey is the only field sport of the Olympic Games that continues to be amateur. The Olympic committee dropped the amateur requirement a long time ago, so the question is why it is retained in hockey?
The hope of financial security was the only incentive for hockey players in Pakistan. The PHF and major patrons of the game such as Habib Bank, Pakistan Customs and Pakistan International Airlines offered jobs to promising players. The government awarded land in residential areas of Karachi and Lahore where the property would have the highest market value. Other financial awards were also given to a team that won the Olympic gold, the Champions Trophy or the Hockey World Cup.
The current hockey players have little or rather no hopes of earning from their sport in any way because the standard of the game has deteriorated so much that we often cannot succeed even against teams from Korea or China or Malaysia. Most of the hockey probables for the Olympic Games in London do not even have regular jobs. When faced by financial insecurity counterbalanced by hopes of making a hefty sum from the WSH league it was but natural that players scooted off to India. How can they be condemned?
The organiser of the league Sunil Shetty is offering 40 million Indian rupees to the winner, 20 to the runner-up and 10 each to teams at third and fourth position. By all accounts this is the first league tournament in the style of football leagues and it will undoubtedly serve as an impetus to hockey talents to strive to shine.
The PHF may call the Pakistani players who have gone to India rebels and even unpatriotic. Both indictments are ridiculous in the world of sports today. However much the PHF and FIH may mutter, they cannot stop hockey from going pro. Their snobbish attitude reminds me of the Kerry Paker affair in cricket. He offered international cricketers money to play and turned cricket into a show biz with colorful team costumes and great games for spectators to watch.
What a lot of snotty fuss was made by the international and Pakistani cricket bodies. Players like Wasim Bari were criticised for being unpatriotic and soilers of the prestine elitist sport of cricket. Today cricket is professional and this alone is behind the sudden leap in the quality of the game throughout the world.
Sunil Shetty could do for Hockey what Kerry Paker did for Cricket. The FIH should recognise the WSH voluntarily or it will have to eat dirt just like the MCC had to and, against its will, accept professionalism.
Call me paranoid, but I have always suspected the FIH of doing things that will kill Asian style hockey whose greatest players were from India and Pakistan. Rules were changed to favour the European style of the game. The Asian style is all about wrist work to move the ball. On the astro turf you have to adopt a slide-and-push movement that requires muscle power rather than delicate wrist work with the hockey stick. It also needs a heavier hockey stick, nearly of the weight that Asian defenders had used. Consequently the Asian style, even the W-formation, did not help. Power play was needed and since the rules were changed for deciders to be on penalty stroke, that was the last nail in the coffin of Pakistan Hockey.
So let us as a nation defend the players who have gone to India to play in the WSH. Why should Islahuddin be the only loud and clear voice in this cause?