Tongue firmly in his cheek, a television presenter harks back to the time when hockey was ‘sone ka phuwara’, golden fountain. Another anchor, less sarcastic but more dramatic, sheds ‘khoon ke aansu’.
There’s a sombre recollection of the days when they were the ‘shahenshah’. And venting of pent-up feelings. “Dynamite lagi imaarate itni tezi se nahi girti jitni tezi se Pakistan hockey giri hai (Buildings fitted with dynamites don’t fall as fast as Pakistan hockey),” screams a host.
The Paris Olympics hockey tournament will begin in six months. But Pakistan won’t be there. Like in Tokyo three years ago. And at Rio before that. Last weekend, they finished fourth at a qualification tournament in Muscat. Only top three qualified.
It means the fabled Green Shirts, the most successful team at the Games after India, have now missed the Olympic bus the same number of times as they have won the gold medal – three.
Outside the studios, few waste their precious tears. For most, it was a fall foretold.
***
“We all need to understand,” asserts Dutch coach Roelant Oltmans, “that hockey in Pakistan isn’t a priority anymore.”
Few, inside Pakistan or outside, have had a better first-hand view of the collapse than Oltmans. The 69-year-old world traveller has been the coach of the Netherlands, India and Malaysia. But Pakistan is where he’s been the most – three times in the last 20 years.
During his first stint, in 2003-04, the country’s national sport was treated as one. There was ambition. And that was backed by money.
“There was clearly a lot more money,” Oltmans tells The Indian Express.
That meant more staff. “In 2004, at the Athens Olympics, I had three Dutch coaches and a video operator in my staff.” A video analyst back then was rare. In that sense, Pakistan were ahead of the curve, at least in Asia.
In 2009, the Pakistani government gave its country’s hockey federation a whopping 1.2 billion Pakistan rupees. Around that time, players in India were going on a strike for unpaid wages and the federation was suspended.
When Oltmans returned in 2018, Pakistan had just enough cash reserves to hire an Australian trainer. And last December, after he took over the reins for the third time, they barely had money to pay him.
In December, the Pakistan Hockey Federation asked him to take charge of the Qualifiers-bound team, and the under-21s coach agreed.
But a dodge that would have made the country’s past masters proud caught Oltmans and the hockey administration wrong-footed. Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar ordered a change of regime in the federation.
In came a new president and out went Oltmans, just days before the qualifiers. “That,” Oltmans says, “was a wrong decision in a series of wrong decisions taken in the country. Look at what happened with Sigfried Aikman!”
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Aikman – the Dutch coach with Surinamese and Indian heritage – came to Pakistan a couple of years ago with his reputation preceding him.
He’d turned Japan, a virtual nobody in world hockey, into Asian Games champions and then at Tokyo, they looked the likes of Australia in the eye fearlessly challenging them. In the nostalgic world of Pakistani hockey, it was hoped he’d restore their glory days.
From the hi-tech world of Japanese hockey, which had pumped in millions of dollars ahead of the home Olympics, Pakistan was a return to the ‘stone age’, he says. Tactically, technologically and financially.
His troubles began with the most basic thing – a hockey ball. “We had 18 kookaburras, which are used in international competitions, to train with,” Aikman adds. To add context, India is estimated to use 200.
One kookaburra, the company’s website shows, costs around Rs 2,000. “We started with 40. But then some of them broke or got lost but you can’t replace them. If you want to train at high intensity, you want to have more balls, else you waste time collecting them every time you play and there’s a break,” Aikman says.
Given the fight for standard equipment, there isn’t a hint of surprise in Aikman’s voice when he says those in charge ‘didn’t have a clue about sports science’. The GPS trackers, which monitor players’ fitness and have become as integral as a hockey stick, haven’t reached that part of the world yet. The players run rounds of the pitch to improve stamina.
Tactically, he adds, Pakistan still play the same brand of hockey that won them the World Cup in 1994. “The concept of midfielders doesn’t exist in Pakistan,” he begins. They’ll play a 5-0-5 formation – right-out, right-in, centre-forward, left-in and left-out in attack. Two side-halves, one centre-mid and two full-backs in defence. “That system is very old-fashioned. It doesn’t work anymore.”
The players’ attacking skills, he vouches, are as exceptional as they were in their heyday. But when they lose the ball, the attackers wouldn’t track down to help the defence. In a modern sporting world where even Messi is chastised for not falling back enough to help out the defence, this was sacrilege.
So, if the deep defenders won back possession, they’d run the length of the field to play the right pass and when the opponents stole the ball, they were left open to counterattacks.
“Their mindset was, ‘win the ball and aage jao. But by the time they make it to the opponent’s ‘D’, they have run 50-60m at a high pace and get tired. They don’t score because they make unforced errors as they are tired.”
A decade ago, all this would have been true for Indian hockey as well. But while strong administrative interventions turned the tide, Pakistan is stuck in a seemingly irrevocable downward spiral.
No balls, no technology, no gym, no protein and no money.
Aikman says after he wasn’t paid his salary for the first few months, the government released funds enough to pay his six month’s wages. “But they paid me for two months while the rest of the money was distributed among the players. I had no problem with that because they, too, weren’t paid for months and were driven merely by passion,” Aikman says.
After a point, though, the federation’s coffers dried up again and they stopped paying the Dutchman, he claims. “I haven’t been paid 10 months’ salary. I probably will never get it. That’s why I couldn’t continue. I have a family to take care of.”
•••
A disconnected telephone connection, cut-off internet and debt of approximately 8 crore Pakistani rupees: That’s what Tariq Hussain Bugti, the new Pakistan hockey chief, claims he inherited from the previous regime.
“The old management,” Bugti says in a video posted by the Balochistan hockey federation, which he heads, “had shaahi kharche. The money that was to be spent on the players was used for themselves and their families. The players haven’t got their dues dating back to almost a year.”
A government policy, Pakistan’s vice-captain Abu Bakr Mahmood points out, in 2021 made a bad situation worse.
In 2021, former Prime Minister and arguably the nation’s biggest sporting hero Imran Khan’s government asked all public departments, corporations and autonomous bodies to stop funding sports teams in 30 disciplines, the Express Tribune reported. For a country in a deep economic crisis, sport seemed a luxury that could be avoided.
Thousands of athletes, multiple reports say, lost their jobs. Along with it, the financial security to focus solely on sports without having to worry about basic needs was also gone.
”I didn’t want to say but I shall,” Mahmood says in the video, “that some international players, who have made the country proud are now driving taxis to run their house.”
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One such player is Ali Butt.
Butt spent most of his adult life doing what he loved the most – play hockey. It earned him a job, a stable income and a purpose. Until all of it was suddenly snatched away.
“The current situation, coupled with Covid, have made things worse,” Butt, who was employed by a government unit, told National Point in 2021. “So, if we go to the ground where will we earn our income from? My department disbanded the team and I got unemployed. I do not have any other experience other than playing hockey. So, I drive a taxi for 12 hours and one or two hours in the evening, I fulfil my hobby. It’s no longer a profession.”
The policy and the financial stress in the country also led to a talent drain. Players began taking premature retirement and moved out of Pakistan to play in professional foreign leagues.
Drag-flicker Mubashir Ali, hero of Pakistan’s previous Olympic qualifying campaign, in 2019 when they gave the Netherlands an almighty scare, turned his back on the national team and moved to England, where he plays professionally.
“He doesn’t want to come back because of what’s happening in the country,” Oltmans says.
Those who have stayed back are often blamed for the rut.
The great Samiullah ‘The Flying Horse’ Khan expresses ‘afsos’ – regret – and grieves on air. But for him, it’s also a ‘told-you-so’ moment.
“Akhtar Rasool, Qasim Zia, Shahbaz Senior, Asif Bajwa… they were (PHF) secretaries. All very good Olympians but their motives weren’t great,” Samiullah told Geo Super.
“They still think they are the second best country in the world after India because of the gold medals won at the Olympics. That’s not how it is,” Oltmans says. “If you miss out on three Olympics in a row, it shows already that the decline began a long time ago.”
From podium to pits
2014 World Cup — Did not qualify
2016 Olympics — Did not qualify
2018 World Cup — 12th out of 16 teams
2020 Olympics — Did not qualify
2023 World Cup — Did not qualify
2024 Olympics — Did not qualify