‘PHF committed to restore hockey teams’

KARACHI: PHF is hopeful that many organisations, including banks and government-run departments, will agree to restore their hockey teams in near future, sources told ‘The News’.

The sources confirmed that PHF was seeking help of federal and provincial governments to revive the closed departmental teams.

They mentioned that Pakistan Customs had already revived its hockey teams. Around a dozen departmental teams were closed in recent years, mainly because of the policies of former PHF chiefs.

The teams that have disappeared from the national hockey scene include UBL, MCB Bank, HBL, Allied Bank, PTCL, KESC, HBFC, KWSB, Sindh Police, and Pakistan Steel Mills.

PHF officials said they were taking the matter very seriously. “First we wanted to restore the confidence of the entire hockey fraternity. We are going step by step,” said a high official. “We have revived the national game at domestic level due to which the confidence of the hockey fraternity has been restored in just one year,” he added.

He said the main responsibility in this regard was of the ministry for inter-provincial coordination (IPC), which handles national-level sports affairs. “The government will have to take up this matter and get the teams restored,” he said.

PHF has already made an arrangement under which jobs will be given to those players who have attended Pakistan’s national training camps at any level —  under-18s to seniors — even if they have not played for Pakistan.

Various federal government-run departments have agreed to provide jobs to such players. The federal government had directed in mid-2000s all federal institutions, banks and major corporations to spend at least two percent of their budgets on formation of sports teams to participate in national-level competitions. But they did not pay attention to these directives.

PHF has managed to revive the national game over the last one year as it organised a number of domestic events with huge amounts of prize money and other lucrative awards for players. It has introduced many new tournaments to domestic hockey calendar. The inter-club hockey is going to be restored across the country within a few days.

PHF has organised various workshops for the training of umpires, referees and other technical officials.

PHF is sending teams of various levels to international tournaments. Currently the under-18 team is in Bangladesh for Youth Asia Cup.

The women team has left for Bangkok to participate in Asian Hockey Federation Cup. The junior team is going to participate in Sultan Johor tournament in October, after which it will go to India for the Junior World Cup 2016. The senior team will go to Malaysia for Asian Champions Trophy next month.