Government should shut hockey if it can’t support: Hasan Sardar

KARACHI: Pakistan hockey team manager Hasan Sardar has resigned, saying the government should shut the national sport in the country if it cannot support it.

“Players in Pakistan have been deprived of daily allowances when the Indian players have been drawing 200,000 Indian rupees in monthly salaries. There’s little to compare in the present scenario,” Sardar, a renowned hockey Olympian, told PPI.

Pakistan, whose record of most number of World Cup titles is still intact, failed to win even a single game in the entire tournament. The best they did was a 1-1 draw against Malaysia.The Green-shirts managed to make it to the crossover stage, thanks to Malaysia for having a worse goal difference.

“We need a foreign coach for a period of two to four years, not just a few months. But the federation doesn’t have enough bucks to do that,” said the former skipper.“More importantly, the players must have job security. Indian states offer DSP-level police jobs to hockey players. We also need to do that. It would also be beneficial for police as players are fitter and disciplined and could easily be trained and inducted,” he said.

Head coach Tauqeer Dar and assistant Danish Kaleem had already stepped down. Foreign Dutch Coach Roelant Oltmans had resigned a few months back after the men in green failed to perform well at Asian Games in Jakarta.

Sardar said that Oltmans’ resignation was a setback as he had started his job just a few months back and the World Cup was just around the corner.Sardar, an Olympics and World Cup gold medalist, said that the nation has been obsessed with Pakistan’s glorious past in the game of hockey and expected the same results as were achieved in the past.

“If the government can’t support the game then it should shut it down so that the nation doesn’t expect anything,” said Sardar. He said that there was plenty to be done if the country wanted to raise the national team’s performance in the international arena. He said that coaches must be given enough time to produce desired results.