Sports in this country are on the decline. Time was when we excelled in hockey and squash in the entire world and for decades no country in the world could hold a candle to us in these two games. From 1952 onwards, right up to the end of 1980, our hockey team used to reach the victory stand in every major hockey fixture of the world that we participated in. Pakistan was lucky to have players like Dara, Hameedi, Anwaar Ahmad Khan, Habib Ali Kiddie, Naseer Bunda, Zaka uddin, Atif, Waheed, Hayat, Matiullah, Samiullah, Hasan Sardar, Shahnaz, Munir Dar, Ghulam Rasool, Qazi Mohib and Salahuddin, who had no parallel in the world of hockey for a very long time. One saw the same position in squash also. Squash players like Hasham Khan, Azam Khan, Roshan Khan, Qamar Zaman, Mohibullah senior, Mohibullah junior, Gogi Allaudin, Jehangir Khan and Jansher Khan carried the banner of Pakistan aloft in squash, not for one, but many decades. Squash was their monopoly. Alas the likes of these squash players are not being produced by us any more. We were never good in football but in cricket we enjoyed a very respectable position for a fairly long time producing legends like Kardar, Imtiaz, Fazal Mahmood, Hanif Mohammad, Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younas, Inzamam, Shoaib Akthar and Sarfaraz Nawaz, to mention a few. In athletics too we were not as bad as we are today. Didn’t we produce the fastest runner of 100 meters in the Asian Olympics back in fifties in the shape of Abdul Khaliq?
There has been an over all deterioration in every game that we play at the international level. In hockey and squash we have touched our nadir. The PHF should be ashamed of itself that it has failed even to cobble up a team capable enough to compete in the pre-qualifying tournament for qualifying to contest at the international fora. In Squash we have lost the way. In cricket we have not been able to arrest the trend of our downfall.
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