The Pakistan Hockey Federation plans to hold a National Club Championship to discover new blood for the national team. Clubs are where talent is scouted, and PHF plans to hold the championship annually so that by 2020 Pakistan once again becomes a hockey giant. The preliminary rounds of the inter-club matches at district level begin on October 24. This is a hopeless plan; hockey cannot revive to its lost glory because there is no money in the game for players. Hockey is still an amateur status game.
It is the key reason and the source of all the other problems besetting Pakistan National Hockey which has dragged down the game. It hit rock bottom several years ago but it is only after the humiliation, the failure to qualify for the Rio Olympics which led PHF to plan the revival of hockey. It is going about it without analysing the key reasons for the failure.
All the problems result from the game's amateur status. It allows PHF office bearers to hold on tight to the purse strings and spend money as they please, which is rarely for the benefit of the players. The money players receive has to be indirect so as to maintain the amateur status. The players are offered jobs by PIA, the banks, Pakistan Customs etc. This means the game is of secondary importance to the player. He must concentrate on earning his bread and butter by working for one of these institutions. Thus their hockey talent becomes a springboard for a job. In professional status games like football and cricket, a player must concentrate on his game which alone ensures how much he will earn. The game alone matters.
Why has the PHF ignored the possibility of turning hockey into a professional sport? It can see what professionalism has done for improving football and cricket, in which the players profit the most, become millionaires entirely through their ability to play the game. Clubs have prospered and so have the controlling bodies like FIFA and the international cricket control body.
Pakistan hockey has produced many legendary players but none of them groomed his sons to play the game and make a career out of it. Every single one has sent his children to study things like chartered accountancy and banking and other money-ensuring professions. If the legendary players put their heart and soul in the game it was because it would lead to professions by which they could earn their living. The game only matters as a means to that end.
When Pakistan failed to qualify for Rio Olympics the nation did not react with shock or resentment. The sentiment for the game is, it seems, also hit rock bottom. On the streets you will see children playing football or cricket. No child plays hockey. There was a time when the Polo Ground next to Pearl Continental Hotel was once a sandy ground and on Sundays it would be full of children playing mostly hockey. Today that field is lost since it has been cordoned off and a lawn with walkpaths cutting through it and trees.
This is the fate of many places where the game used to be played. Most have been commandeered by mosque builders. Not only Hockey but nearly all field sports are ignored by the builder mafia. The new housing complexes boast malls, mosques, cinema theatres and a gym which is really a useless inclusion since few use it, so it too ultimately becomes a place for meetings, receptions, parties on a small scale.
Since hockey is recognised as the national sport, its chief patron is the head of the state. But the last one to take an active interest in promotion of the game was Zia-ul-Haq. The presidents who came after him were too busy preserving their own status to look at the problems of national hockey. In Zia's time the game reached its peak. The national team won every single international hockey tournament. Pakistan colours were formidable.
As for clubs; there are very few actual clubs. Most are just brothers and friends who gather to play the game. The PHF does not have a list of clubs and if the forthcoming championship is to be restricted to registered clubs they will not have scouted the whole spectrum of hockey talent.
As for school hockey, it just does not exist. Sports is not there in the curriculum of schools whether government or private. Sports Days, if they are held at all, feature students who have practised a game or athletic even on their own. The school did not help them or groom them. Probably their fathers did. If in the next four years PHF succeeds in raising a great national hockey team through its plan for club hockey, it will be nothing short of a miracle.