Pakistan's hockey chiefs and a group of former Olympians have spent much of the last two years sniping at each other but last month they suddenly found themselves agreeing.

It was Pakistan's title-winning triumph in the Asian Games ñ their first in twenty years ñ that has forced the ex-Olympians to silence their guns and enable the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) to look ahead to the future with a lot of hope.

After a series of false starts, Pakistan hockey has finally moved to the right track. Their Asian Games success should catapult Pakistan back to the elite group of world hockey where they truly belong.

With more than a year and a half to go before London hosts Olympic Games 2012, Pakistan have enough time to prepare for what should be their next big target.

Winning a gold medal is no mean feat but the biggest reward for Pakistan is that they have clinched an automatic berth for the London Games, a fact that should boost their morale and give them a head start in the lead up to the quadrennial showpiece. It should also put them on the right track for the 2014 World Cup at The Hague.

Now that things are settling down after the hype and hoopla of the national team's gold-medal victory in Guangzhou, its time to look beyond what is easily one of Pakistan's biggest hockey achievements in recent times. Pakistan hockey needed their team to win the Asian Games gold for a variety of reasons.

Since the 1994 World Cup triumph in Sydney, Pakistan had been unable to win any of the major international titles. Their performance at the world level was getting worse with each passing year. In recent times, it had touched rock bottom.

Pakistan failed to reach the semifinals in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and then flopped miserably in the Beijing Olympiad two years ago. But the most shocking result came at this year's World Cup in March when Pakistan – four time world champions – crashed to a humiliating last-place finish in the World Cup.

For Pakistan hockey's fast diminishing fan base, it was a result that was too hard to digest. Demonstrations were held in various cities and demands for sweeping changes in the PHF were frequently made.

A few months later, Pakistan stumbled in the Commonwealth Games and once again the venue was New Delhi where the Greenshirts were thrashed by old rivals India.

With such poor outings in 2010 behind them, Pakistan's chance of redeeming themselves was the Asian Games. They had to win the title to wash away the tears of those embarrassing failures.

This time, they did succeed and in the process have given Pakistan hockey a new lease of life.

As Asian Games champions, Pakistan have qualified for the London Games. In time, they should also qualify for the Champions Trophy. It seems that Pakistan are finally ready to climb up the rankings' ladder again.

Hockey supporters have already started talking about Pakistan's hopes of regaining the Olympic and world title.

It's certainly not impossible. But to say that it's a tough task would be an understatement.

Pakistan are still lagging far behind teams like Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. There is a yawning gap between those teams and our side which can only be bridged through a comprehensive training programme in the lead up the London Games.

But before that, Pakistan's hockey chiefs will have to take a few key decisions. The first and foremost question they have to answer and answer quickly is whether they want to stick with the senior players or opt to rebuild the team.

Hockey officials and differ on this issue. Some experts are backing the idea of retaining players like Sohail Abbas and Rehan Butt, who played a key role in Pakistan's successful Asian Games campaign. Others, however, believe that the seniors are in the twilight stages of their careers and should be replaced by youngsters right away so that the newcomers are given enough time to get ready for mega events like the Olympics.

Personally, I believe that Pakistan cannot afford to say goodbye to senior players like Sohail, Rehan, Salman Akber and Shakeel Abbasi at this point in time. At least, not in one go.

If you take a long, hard look at the national hockey scene, it would become quite evident that there is a big dearth of talented youngsters who are good enough to become world class players. Unlike the past when hockey was a passion in this part of the world, the sport is not really popular any more. It won't be easy to find suitable replacements.

Even in the early eighties when Pakistan hockey was brimming with talent, the decision to axe senior players after the 1984 Olympic gold in Los Angeles turned out to be a back-breaking one for the national game. It never really recovered from that loss.

Pakistan cannot take uncalculated risks. Axing the senior players could turn out to be really counter-productive.

But that doesn't mean Pakistan cannot show faith in their young Turks. They just have to strike a balance while keeping their options open. It's not the time to make any rigid policies. As long as a player is fit and is delivering on the field, he should stay in the team regardless of his age.

In the meantime, PHF should also invest in its junior and second string teams. It should rotate the players and try them out in minor events which Pakistan should feature in quite regularly during 2011 and in the first half of 2012 so that a strong and balanced team could be raised for London.

Qasim Zia, the PHF president, along with secretary Asif Bajwa will have to start working harder to find the right equation right away. They will have to consolidate the team around them and invest more and more on development projects.

The PHF should also make all out efforts to get all stake-holders on board and try putting an end to an unnecessary tussle with our past heroes. It's causing more harm than good.

On the coaching front, Pakistan should devise their plan carefully and then stick to it. Michel van den Heuvel, Pakistan's coach, was unable to inspire his team at the Commonwealth Games but bounced back in Guangzhou. The Dutchman has earned a well-deserved extension in his contract and will be at the helm of the national team till the 2010 Olympics.

It's after a long time that things are looking good for Pakistan hockey. But there are fears that with any unplanned steps Pakistan can waste this golden chance of reviving it. For the love of hockey, one hopes that it won't happen.

We had plenty of warnings we deliberately warded them off, showing oblivious faces. The images go on and on. They depress us. They may have been a surprise to many. But the fact is we should have seen them coming. Off camera, in private gatherings so many of the stakeholders did. Many contemporary colleagues did too.

Four more Pakistan players named by Mazhar Majeed are allegedly involved in spot and match-fixing in addition to Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir. Now come in the fray, Imran Farhat, Kamran Akmal, Umar Akmal and Wahab Riaz. And it is not that Shahid Afridi, Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf or Abdul Razzaq have been termed honest, they had escaped Mazhar's attention because to him they have few years of cricket left in them; he showed eagerness to invest in the youthful promising players. Only, to Mazhar, Saeed Ajmal is the religious type, untainted and inaccessible.

Yet we will deceive ourselves. The occasional periods of good news when the team appears to revive or an individual sparkles such as Azhar Ali against South Africa or Younis returning to his real mettle there comes a bubble-huge taints on the team and the players, abolishing ethics, he would we not know?

The real story is of failed PCB management and Ijaz Butt's unashamed run at the helm; regrettably Butt in spite of being condemned didn't appear to shake off his lethargy neither did he resign, there are evidences that he returns to slumber; he has ignored the fact that his survival has corresponded with Pakistan cricket's extermination. It is not about the stories of players being corrupt, the ills of accumulating quick money has replaced patriotism, the devotion.

At the PCB priorities are different; they have been celebrating the cult of unabated power, giving their people unprecedented riches, they have plastered their covers with the joyrides and luxurious stays in five star hotels. The disgrace has hit hard, and still we haven't done anything-except bail out people like Ijaz Butt; an old formula of the few benefiting at the expense of Pakistan's most prized product, cricket. The controversies have hit hard, and still we are apathetic to shame that has been inflicted upon us. The people at the PCB haven't bother to peer beyond their wallets into the eyes of the 180 million people of the country who have now started to shoot each other in shame and frustration in their own ghettos or at the ones with skeletal bodies who have been starving to see cricket to return to its strength of the 1980s and 1990s.

Pakistan cricket is in a mess because Ijaz Butt has failed to smell the fumes that were suffocating the space around him. Instead of getting into the details of Farhat, Riaz, Umar and Kamran Akmal also being part of the 'infamy', I quizzically try asking innocent questions. Where have we gotten it all wrong?

When I was growing up I was taught by the late Omar Kureishi the philosophy of cricket ethics, and Dr Zafar Altaf added flavour with his delineation of moral philosophy and thought it was the discipline concerned with what was morally good and bad, right and wrong. These players, the management and on top of it, Ijaz Butt with tons of weight on his weakening knees have failed to apply it to his regime not being able to evolve a theory of moral values or principles of governance.

Butt at 73 should have realised why his tenure was filled with controversies and the unending sequence of embarrassing events. None discussed meta-ethics investigating where the moral principles of the cricketers had come from, and what they actually mean? Ijaz Butt couldn't direct himself to normative ethics considering it more practical and concerned with finding moral principles governing how he could act.

Applied ethics considered applying their moral principles to particular real world situations. How would we know that we does Pakistan cricket stands on ethical issues, following the old maxim that extreme case made bad news; we had enough of it.

In Pakistan cricket, I definitely agree that the moral principles are not being currently applied, and the ham-fisted, arrogant players and management have virtually routed the essence of cricket, and the phoenix is dead, not set for reincarnation. Spot fixing, indiscipline and mismanagement are results of denigration and degradation of the product we as citizens of Pakistan have become and it is something to do with relativism, universalism in immorality.

How are our ethical decisions influenced by our knowledge, or lack of a situation? Epistemology and ethics, moral judgment and moral knowledge, how is the capacity of moral judgment acquired? Moral education; many believe that these cricketers, not well schooled and educated do not possess a special moral intuition (intuitionism in ethics). Skepticism about the ability of morality, however remain a common view.

To me what happened at Lord's with Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir alleged to have sold their conscience for financial provisions, the situation ethics it could be termed as, and suggests that circumstances can lead to the abandonment of any moral principle, particularists arguing that this is as you can't assume that a reason that applies in one case will apply in others (moral particularism, situation ethics).

Events employ moral principles, but I believe there is no super principle to decide conflicts of principles. Some believe the opposite, that morality is underpinned by a single overarching principle, such as not to lie.

I agree, the rational moral systems must be based on self-interest. However, it can be shown that a moral system can be defined to create mutually beneficial acts. It is about egoism and altruism. In recent times there has been a split between those who believe that cricket should be played and administered with morality based solely on reason, and those who suggest that some non-rational component such as emotion is also involved.

Much work has to be done, even by the ICC, not only restricted to the PCB and the energies have to be devoted to deciding whether moral judgments were best understood as beliefs and so cricketers for testing their truth and falsity, or as disguised expressions of emotions or commands (analytics, ethics, prescriptivism).

I view the present state of Pakistan cricket as ineffective and under the weather.

Mr. Butt, if you aren't going then please set a trend towards advocacy management. Let your governance be marked by impassioned advocacy to actually cleanse the entire cricket system in Pakistan but your lethargy and apathy has eroded all such possibilities, and your failures seem to be infectious?

The fanfare with which we Pakistanis have celebrated our victories in three disciplines at the recently concluded Asian Games may be a good omen for the future of these games but at the same time, we must also ponder over the general deterioration of other sports in which we always have shown lot of promise and better results in the past.

It is heartening to see the hockey team winning the Asian Games gold after a lapse of twenty years but the fact remains that the same team has gone down to India four times during the last year. The team just edged their semifinal on penalty strokes against South Korea, a formidable foe in recent times.

There is an improvement in the team's showing, especially in scoring field goals but our defence remains vulnerable as ever. Although the team conceded penalty corners at will, they were quick to retaliate and the forwards were in good positions to convert crosses; although with less conviction. The coach must be complimented.

The best role, though, was played by goalkeeper Salman Akbar. His performances left little doubt that he was the best shot-stopper in the championship.

Secretary Asif Bajwa was very pleased with the performance of the team but it is still important to ask what have we done to revitalise the regional associations, schools and universities from where we will get our future stars. Centres like Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Gojra, Khyber Pukhtoonkhawa, Sindh, especially Karachi and Hyderabad and Quetta in Balochistan are areas where we must concentrate and make the game popular.

Pakistan's other two medals were in new disciplines. The women cricket team, entering the fray for the first time, put up a splendid show and brought gold for Pakistan after arch-rivals India had backed out at the last minute.

Surprisingly, Pakistan's men's cricket team lost to Afghanistan in the semifinal.

I am reminded of a similar incident when in a pool match of the ICC Cricket WOrld Cup 1999, Pakistan lost to Bangladesh to the chagrin and astonishment of all the well wishers of the game back home. It was then debated that Pakistan lost the match on purpose to enable Bangladesh to win Test status.

The way our batsmen played in Guangzhou was ample proof that there was something fishy but the matter was not discussed thereafter. Ever since Pakistan cricket has been beset by the spot-fixing scandal, every time our players participate in an international event, they leave a trail of stories of so-called match and spot-fixing.

The third gold Pakistan claimed was in squash, a game in which it has always stayed atop the world. With the retirement of Jansher Khan, the game has failed to win back the rightful place to where it belonged. It is now time to provide more facilities to the squash players and encourage them to continue in the same stride to achieve more laurels for Pakistan.

However, it was astonishing that Pakistan could not win any medals in wrestling and boxing while there was no representation for the country of over 118 million souls in track and field.

The boxing, wrestling and athletic associations should look into this serious matter and delve into the reasons for it athletes' poor showing in these fields.

Not only that, but we must also continue to promote present stars while at the same time look for new blood so they can takeover when the old players call it a day and no vacuum is created in their absence.

arshadshami@hotmail.com

Pakistan's hockey chiefs are hoping that the old adage -- nothing succeeds like success -- will prove true for the national team which ended its title drought by winning the Asian Games crown in Guangzhou (China) last month.

They are now eyeing glory at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and then the next World Cup to be staged by the Netherlands two years later.

"Certainly, winning gold medal in Asian Games is a big achievement and it has boosted our confidence. Now, we want to capitalise on what we have achieved and focus on achieving more success in the future," PHF secretary Asif Bajwa told this writer.

Pakistan won the Asian Games gold medal in spite of losing to arch-rivals India in their thrilling pool match. However, the Greenshirts managed to overpower top Asian team South Korea in semifinals and went on to defeat Malaysia, who toppled India in the semis, in the final.

However, Bajwa said that he will warn the team against any complacency as it prepares for future assignments.

"We can't afford to get complacent," he said. "This is the point from where we begin to work for a title-winning campaign in the Olympics in 2010 and World Cup 2014. We would soon be chalking out a comprehensive plan to be eventually successful in achieving our goals," he said.

Bajwa said that they would certainly be taking the Olympic 2012 assignment seriously but was quick to add that the team needs time to be able to reach the summit on the international circuit.

"When we say that we are looking to grab World Cup glory in 2014, we are actually defining our goal realistically. But it doesn't mean that we would be taking other major tournaments coming before World Cup 2014 as unimportant. We would also go in to give our top performance in events such as Olympics 2012 where has already secured a place," he explained.

Bajwa said that the win in Asian Games has injected new life in hockey and the federation is keen to work with new zeal for the promotion of the national game.

While the PHF is buoyant following their team's memorable triumph in China, former hockey greats are also expecting a revival of the national game after 16 frustrating years.

Former Olympian Shahnaz Sheikh said that gold medal in the Asian Games will help in the revival of national game of hockey in the country. Shahnaz is hopeful that the Greenshirts would continue to play with the same passion as they displayed in Asian Games.

Chief selector Hanif Khan said that the Asian Games triumph has lifted the morale of the all the people related to hockey in one way or another and the fans have now looking for Pakistan's top performance in international arena.

"The Asian Games title certainly have a reviving effect on hockey and I believe that the players would now be in proper psychologically mind frame. This would prove out to be very healthy for the team in the long run," said Hanif, also a former Olympian.

Pakistan had a disappointing run this year as they ended at bottom-rock 12th position in the World Cup and later failed to impress in Commonwealth Games, where they finished on the sixth spot.

Another hockey legend Samiullah said that Pakistan's morale has received a huge boost with the win after their Asian Games triumph, but there is yet a long way to go if they want to perform well in 2012 London Olympics and World Cup 2014 to be held in The Hague, Netherlands.

"Definitely with the win in Asian Games and also the functioning of the PHF academies would have a positive affect on Pakistan's campaign in Olympics 2012 and World Cup 2014. However, both events would be really tough and they must work hard to make their presence felt in them. They should start their homework as soon as possible," he stressed.

It prompted president Sepp Blatter to enthusiastically declare that the World Cup would be going "to new lands" but, in selecting Qatar, Fifa have made arguably the most controversial -- and risky -- decision even in their history.

Some facts. At 1.6 million, the entire population of Qatar is around one fifth the size of London. During the summer months of June and July when the tournament will be held, the average daytime temperature is a sweltering 40∞C. The Qatar national football team is currently ranked 113th in the world and has never played in a World cup. None of the stadiums are yet ready, while the city (Lusail) that will host the World Cup final is still being built.

Qatar is not so much starting from a blank canvas as a blank desert.

This uncertainty was enough for Fifa's technical bid inspectors to grade Qatar "high" in overall operational risk. Yet at the end of a process when having existing infrastructure seemed like a disadvanatage, England were not the only delegation leaving Fifa House with some pointed observations. "I don't quite understand what factor is favorable," said Kuniya Daini, Japan's Football Association vice-chairman.

Jack Reilly, of the Australia Football Federation, had a theory. "The Qatar delegation have been pushing money around for a long period of time," he said.

With its vast gas and oil reserves, Qatar will surely be the wealthiest nation to have ever hosted a World Cup. And an extraordinary programme of spending will now commence.

Projected by the International Monetary Fund to have the world's fastest-growing economy, Qatar plans to spend $100 billion on infrastructure projects between now and 2015. In that period, the country will construct a $25 billion rail network, an $11 billion airport, a $5.5 billion deep water seaport and a $1 billion crossing to link the new airport with projects in the northern part of Doha, the capital city. An additional $20 billion will also be spent on building new roads.

With such vast resources, words of reassurance could be provided by Qatar bid president Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani. "We won't let you down. You will be proud of us, proud of the Middle East," he said.

One enormous difference for players and fans compared to any previous World Cup will be the issue of travel. Qatar is the smallest nation to stage the World Cup since Uruguay in 1930, with 10 out of its 12 stadiums located within a 30 kilometre radius. Indeed, once a new metro system is operational, venues will be no more than one hour apart, giving fans the chance to watch more than one match in a day.

The question of legacy will also be handled in an utterly unique way. Qatar have unveiled plans for modular stadiums that would be dismantled and taken to countries with poor football infrastructure. And the centre-piece of the World Cup will be the Lusail Stadium, a structure that will have a capacity of 86,000 and be surrounded by water. It will take four years to build and promises to be as visually breathtaking as Beijing's iconic 'Birds Nest' Olympic Stadium.

All this and the vast spending on other futuristic solar-powered stadiums may sound alluring, but serious questions persist. The climate in the Middle East remains the dominant issue of concern, with Qatar adamant that they have the technology to counteract the problem.

Each stadium will be designed with an air-conditioning system that will apparently reduce the temperature to a still balmy 27∞C. Yet the problem of the heat must also be tackled in respect of the training conditions for the players and the overall experience for supporters.

Doubts also linger over how a country the size of Qatar will be able to handle an influx of around 400,000 fans. Qatar currently has around 50,000 hotel rooms but is aiming to increase that number to 95,000.

For all the potential logistical problems, the decision certainly reflects the vast growth of football's popularity in the Middle East; something the Premier League has done so much to fuel.

Thousands converged on the Corniche and other public places in Doha in a spontaneous outburst of joy following Blatter's declaration, and there is a wider sense that this could be a transformational moment for the region.

Zinedine Ziadane, the French footballer of Algerian origin, who acted as an ambassador for Qatar's bid, said it was a sign that "the Arab world is emerging". And there was a simple message from Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. "Thank you for believing in change," he said.

It will undoubtedly be a World Cup like no other.