Musical chair game continues in PHF

ISLAMABAD: The musical chair game continues in the struggling Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) with yet another shuffling in the team management and selection committee, highlighting the fast losing wisdom within the ranks of federation more due to poor results and non-professional handling of all the key departments.

Every time an international quality event approaches, one gets an altogether new set of managers as if those who were there earlier had no credentials for the job they were given months back.

In hardly over eighteen months time the PHF has replaced coaches and committee for the third time. Just sacked team management led by Farhat Khan was given just six months time to show their coaching abilities which possibly was not even there at the outset of his appointment. This can easily be said about Hasan Sardar, though one of the greatest centre forwards the game has seen, he does not possess qualities of a coach. Same can be said for his assistants, Rehan Butt and Saqlain.

One wonders why temperamental Saqlain has been elevated to post of assistant coach. How a player who is remembered more for his indiscipline would teach his charges how to be technically and mentally strong and discipline.

When it comes to coaching, PHF has again left it to miracles to save their blushes. Mere great names and that too who was there almost thirty years back and has never proved a successful coach in the past can guide you to success.

Hasan has never been a successful coach or a selector neither he had any real experience of coaching of a quality team. So the federation left it all to heavens to help them get positive results in the forthcoming Commonwealth Games and later in the World Cup that again luckily for them would be staged in India in December this year.

It was not long ago when the federation made visa excuses to pull their junior string out of the World Cup held in India. The way the federation is working these days, the fate of the coming Hockey World Cup would possibly be no different.

It is the Commonwealth Games to be held in Australia in coming April that holds importance for the country’s hockey fans. If federation officials think that they would again pass on the buck of expected poor results on the shoulders of this newly appointed management, they are mistaken. It is only the federation who should be blamed for failing to show consistency in their decisions.

If Kh Junaid led national hockey team failed to deliver during the last years World League semis, it was not his but federation’s fault that appointed him as a head coach. That management was not allowed to settle down. In July 2017 new management headed by Farhat Khan took over. The decision on the part of PHF was highly controversial as he never had any real coaching experience to assist his credentials. In less than six months time, the federation has come up with new management, believing that what others were unable to do, this management would achieve it for them. All these rapid changes show the anxiety and failure within the PHF ranks. They are at loss to understand the real problem lies or possibly those officials who are running the show are not capable of streamlining the system than can ensure good results for them.

Not even miracle can help the team management led by Hasan Sardar to guide the team end up on victory stand in the forthcoming Commonwealth Games where Pakistan has always enjoyed unprecedented success. The decision of changing the management yet again open up the debate as whether the current incumbents posses any true understanding of the game.