The hockey fans are extremely sad over the continuous poor performance of our national team at the international level from mid-1980 hitherto. Time was when our hockey team was always amongst the medals. We always reached the victory stand. We won either the gold or silver or bronze medal. In the 1948world Olympic Games in London our hockey team got fourth position. Four years later in the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 we won bronze. In the World Olympics of 1956 played in Australia we won silver medal and at long last we won the gold medal in the Rome Olympics in 1960.
Our hockey team continued to win medals in all the subsequent major world tournaments right up to mid of 1980. The rot seems to have set in afterwards . Not only Pakistan but India too showed decline in hockey after 1980 . Their place was occupied by the Australian and the European hockey teams . Lately, the Indian hockey team has showed some improvement but as far as Pakistan is concernced we are still neither here nor there.
It would be advisable if all the living veteran hockey Olympians be asked by the PHF to join their heads, ascertain the root cause of our debacle in hockey and then come out with a concrete plan to resuscitate it. In case the government provides the same attention and funds to the PHF which it has been giving to the PCB would it not help improve it? Isn’t it essential that in order to attract hockey talent, the same type of financial package and contracts be provided to hockey players also as are being given to the cricketers? Is it not necessary that Austro turf be laid in at least one hockey ground of every district of the country?
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