Pakistan dazzle in Doha
The national hockey team’s title-winning triumph at the Asian Champions Trophy comes as a huge confidence-booster for the players and officials
By Bilal Hussain

Just weeks after winning their first Champions Trophy medal in eight years, Pakistan’s hockey team grabbed the title at the 2nd Asian Champions Trophy last Thursday in Doha.

Pakistan seemed to be under pressure after losing to chief rivals India in a league match of the six-nation tournament but they bounced back with a vengeance in the grand finale to pip the Indians 5-4.

It was a nail-biting encounter in which the Pakistanis kept their cool to avenge the last year’s defeat in the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy final in Ordos (China).

The triumph in the Qatari capital has come at a perfect time as Pakistan’s critics were saying that the national team’s bronze medal in the elite eight-nation Champions Trophy in Melbourne earlier this year was a fluke.

Some experts were wondering whether Pakistan would be able to maintain their winning spree in Doha where South Korea — one of Asia’s top hockey teams — was missing.

And when Pakistan lost to India and were then held to a 3-3 draw by Malaysia in a crunch league game last week, doubts were raised over the capability of skipper Mohammad Imran and his team.

However, the Pakistanis clicked when it mattered the most as they played attacking hockey to tame India once again following their victory over them at the play-off for the third place in Melbourne.

A large number of Pakistani expats turned up to support their team in the final. The Green-shirts managed to live up to the expectations at a packed Al Rayyan Stadium with a dazzling show in the second half to win the Asian Champions Trophy. Pakistan are also the reigning Asian Games champions as they won the gold at the 2010 Asiad in Guangzhou (China).

Pakistan did face a few hiccups but that didn’t prevent them from reigning supreme against the Indians.

The Pakistanis suffered a major blow in the fourth minute when their prolific striker Shakeel Abbasi was injured and had to be carried away from the field. Pakistan earned a short corner in the seventh minute and Muhammad Waqas, the tournament’s leading scorer, capitalised on it to give his team a 1-0 lead.

But the Indians retaliated with a goal through SV Sunil just two minutes later.

Buoyed up by the equaliser, the Indians switched to attack mode and made it 2-1 when drag flicker VR Raghunath converted a short corner in the 18th minute.

Pakistan returned to the field after lemon-time looking like a much better team as they launched attacks in waves in their search for an equaliser. It came in the 42nd minute through Shafqat Rasool.

Six minutes later, Pakistan earned a short corner which was converted by Imran, their captain. The Indians responded with a 55th minute equaliser through Gurvinder Singh Chandi. With both sides playing free-flowing hockey, Pakistan made it 4-3 through Waqas whose second goal of the match came in the 57th minute, taking his tally to 11 goals in the tournament.

The Indians were still not giving up as they made it 4-4 through Rupinder Pal Singh.

But it was to be Pakistan’s night. The packed crowd went wild as the Green-shirts earned a short corner and Imran found the target yet again to score the winner in the 64th minute.

The final didn’t finish without its share of controversy as India walked away from the turf in protest in the 67th minute after their appeal for a short corner was rejected by the South Korean umpire.

However, they returned to the field and in spite of a few efforts they failed to stop the rampaging Pakistanis from cruising to the title.

“It’s a great victory,” said Imran, a seasoned defender who was also at the helm of Pakistan’s impressive campaign in Melbourne. “It’s the sort of result that adds to your confidence and boosts your morale. I’m sure that our team is becoming good enough to reach bigger goals,” he said after leading Pakistan to the Doha title.

The victory at the Asian Champions Trophy is certainly a great achievement. What Pakistan need to do now is to capitalise on it. They should continue working hard because Pakistan cannot just sit back and bask in the Asian glory.

Our players have to win bigger titles like the 2014 World Cup and should be well aware of the fact that they still lag far behind teams like Australia and the Netherlands. The good news is that the gap between them and the top team is reducing. One hopes that it is bridged well ahead of the World Cup to be held in Hague, the Netherlands.

bilalsports86@yahoo.com

The Tendulkar habit
 By Harsha Bhogle

Dear Sachin,

I guess this means the countdown has begun. It couldn’t have been easy for you since cricket has been your life, your solitary love outside of family. I know there are cars and music and seafood, and, as I recently realised, the odd glass of wine, but a bat was what you were meant to hold, and it is with one that you mesmerised a nation and a sport. I wondered if you could have given up Test cricket and stayed on in One-day Internationals — until you told me it takes a lot out of you. And you were never one to give less than a 100%.

I guess your body finally won. It had been giving you signals — that permanently cracked bone in your toe, the struggle to get out of bed when the back played up, that elbow... ah, that’s a different story altogether, but you always overruled it. It must have sulked but you forced more out of it than anyone else. It was bound to serve notice one day. I mean, you will be 40 soon; people get reading glasses at 40.

But you leave behind an aspect of cricket that you defined. There will be comparisons with other greats in Test cricket, and you will be a chapter in its history, but with the one-dayer, you are its history, in a sense, certainly for India, where you played in more than half the games (463 out of 809). The team had played a mere 165 games before you started, and it is a measure of the impact you had that there were only 17 centuries scored by then. India made a century every 9.70 games. After you started, that number comes down dramatically, to one every 3.52 games. And since that first century, in Colombo, it comes down even further, to one every 3.23 games. To think that you started with two ducks.

Now, of course, the kids keep notching up the hundreds. This young fellow Kohli, for example, who plays with your intensity but whose vocabulary I guess you would struggle with!

Looking back, I can’t imagine it took you 78 games to hit a hundred. But then you were floating around in the batting order, spending too much time not being in the thick of it all. I can see why you were so desperate to open the batting in Auckland that day in 1994. Why, when you told me the story of how you pleaded with Ajit Wadekar and Mohammad Azharuddin to give you one opportunity, you sounded like you were still pleading. But I guess you had a history of wanting to be in battle, like that misty night in Kolkata (it was Calcutta in your youth, wasn’t it?) when you took the ball in the 50th over with just six to defend and delivered a win.

It seems impossible to imagine that you averaged a mere 30.84 till that day in Auckland, and that you dawdled along at a strike rate of 74. Since then you averaged 47 at a strike rate of 87. It was a marriage meant to be.

I remember that afternoon in Colombo when you approached your first hundred. It had to be Australia, and you were in sublime touch, and you so wanted that first one. You made 110 in 130 balls, but oh, you agonised over those last 15 runs before you got to the century. In a sense, it was like that with the last one too, wasn’t it? It was in those moments only that you were a bit like us, that you wanted something so badly, you let it affect your game. But between those two, you were always so much fun, in that belligerent, ruthless, adolescent first phase, in your second, rather more mature and calculated, existence, and of course in that joyous last. What fun that was. The 163 in Christchurch, the 175 in Hyderabad, that 200 in Gwalior, the 120 in Bangalore, the 111 in Nagpur. If it hadn’t been for that devilish 100th, would you have continued playing the same way? That 100th hurt you, didn’t it, as it did all of us, and I guess we didn’t help you by not letting you forget. When the big occasion came, you always played it like another game, even though you knew it was a big day, like those two classics in CB Series finals in 2008, or, of course, those unbelievable nights in Sharjah in 1998. But this 100th took away four or five more.

I know how disappointed you were after the 2007 World Cup. You weren’t batting in your favourite position, you were unhappy (if you could ever be unhappy in the game that you revered and tended to like a servant), and without quite saying it, you hinted at the fact that you might have had enough. But the dawn always follows the darkest hour.

After the age of 34, in a young man’s game, you averaged 48.36. Even by the standards you set yourself, that was unbelievable (in spite of all those nineties, when, almost inevitably, I seemed to be on air). And most of those came without your regular partner. While Sourav was around, you averaged almost 50 at a strike rate of 89. The mind still lingers on the time the two of you would come out at the start of a One-day International. (I watched one of those partnerships the other night and it seemed only the commercial breaks could stop you two.)

By now you were playing the lap shots more than the booming drives down the ground. It puzzled me and made many nervous. “I want to play down the ground too,” you told me, “that is why I am playing the paddle shot. As soon as they put a fielder there, I’ll play the big drive.” You were playing with the field the way your great friend Brian Lara did when he was on top of his game.

But beyond the numbers some memories remain. I couldn’t believe how you went after Glenn McGrath in Nairobi. I must have watched that clip 50 times but understood it more when you told me you wanted to get him angry, that on a moist wicket his line-and-length routine would have won them the game. That pull shot is as fresh in the memory as that first cover drive off Wasim Akram in the 2003 World Cup when you took strike because you thought the great man would have too many tricks for Sehwag.

I remember that World Cup well, especially an unheralded innings in Harare that helped beat a sticky Zimbabwe and put the campaign back on track. And your decision to keep the Player of the Tournament award in your restaurant because you would much rather have had the smaller winner’s medal. It told me how much that meant to you, and when I saw the tears on your face that night in Mumbai, I instantly knew why.

I had only once seen you in tears and that was at a World Cup too. You were practising in Bristol. You were just back from your father’s funeral and were wearing the most peculiar dark glasses. There was none of the usual style to them; they were big enough to cover half your face. You agreed to my request to speak to the media and briefly took them off while you were arranging your kit bag. I was taken aback to see your eyes swollen. You must have been in another world but you were courteous as ever. It was only Kenya the next day, but I can see why you rate that hundred.

There are so many more. I was only a young cricket writer when I started watching you play, so there will be many. That is also why so many of us will miss you. Somebody said to me he didn’t want you to quit because it would mean his childhood was over. It isn’t just them. Just as the child in you never grew up, so too did many grizzled old men become children when they saw you in blue. You were a great habit, Sachin.

So you are done with the blue then. But the whites remain. That is our first image of you — the curly hair, the confident look, the front foot stride — all in white. I hope you have fun in them. You don’t need to try too hard to prove a point to us because when you have fun we do too.

Cheers, you did well for us. And you gave life and strength to our game. —Cricinfo

Power politics hurting sports
By Alam Zeb Safi

Although the trend of parallel bodies in various national sports federations had emerged well before the elections of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) in February this year due to a conflict between the National Olympic Committee and the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB), it intensified when a real battle erupted in the sports fraternity following the Supreme Court’s May 8 decision regarding the national sports policy.

The implementation process of the national sports policy has been halted due to litigation and much depends on the decision of the Lahore High Court (LHC) which is hearing a petition filed by the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) challenging the legal status of the PSB.

The parallelism in the national sports federations and associations is pushing the country’s sports towards gloom. The POA, which declares itself to be the champions of shielding the entity of sports from all illegal influences, needs to think seriously that by promoting parallelism it is going to sabotage the national sports which have already touched lowest ebb due to various reasons.

Recently, POA made another bold effort of forming a body of its own choice in boxing when it backed the PBF President Doda Bhutto and his associates to establish a boxing federation, the legality of which is questionable.

The rival group led by the PBF secretary Akram Khan claims that no elections were held. Interestingly, a day before the electoral meeting on December 20 at a hotel in Lahore, Islamabad Boxing Association (IBA) had got a stay order from the sessions’ court of the federal capital on the plea that the electoral meeting of the PBF was being held without fulfilling the constitutional requirements. It was strange that the meeting was conducted despite the stay order. The first hearing in this connection was held on December 22 and the second will be on January 2. Both Doda and Akram are respondents in the case.

The legal status of the newly-formed boxing federation will be known only after the completion of the litigation process. It will also be seen whether the newly-formed body is able to get recognition from the world boxing governing body (AIBA). The POA will certainly help them. But if it got recognition then Akram could be supported by the PSB in forming another body as has happened in other sports.

But those who are manipulating all such proceedings must think that they are going to damage the interests of the players who are sacrificing everything for moving ahead in their respective games.

It is not the only case as a few days ago a parallel body was formed in the Pakistan Table Tennis Federation (PTTF). And again it was the POA which manipulated the process in Peshawar.

More than a month ago, a parallel body was also formed in the Pakistan Cycling Federation (PCF) with Idrees Haider Khwaja as its president. A cycling body had already been working with Munawar Baseer as its president.

On December 20, International Cycling Union (UCI) showed its reservation over the legality of the cycling body being run by Khwaja Idrees in a letter written to the POA and has threatened that Idrees, who is using the letterhead of the PCF, could be sanctioned.

The letter says: “The elections of the Pakistan Cycling Federation (PCF) for the next term were conducted under the chairmanship of Mr Nouroz Shakoor Khan, now ex-president of the Pakistan Cycling Federation in line with the constitution of the PCF (with amendments approved in the general council meeting dated October 31, 2007) in democratic and transparent manner.

“Therefore as far as our International Federation is concerned, as well as the Asian Cycling Confederation, the people elected at this General Assembly are for us the legitimate representatives, until September 2015.

“Your National Olympic Committee is continuing to recognize other cycling representatives, which was the case at your General Assembly of October 14, 2012, which we sincerely regret,” said the letter.

“Furthermore, in spite of our advice Mr Haider Khawaja continues to use the letter-headed paper printed with Pakistan Cycling Federation stating its affiliation to the UCI and ACC, which is not valid. It goes without saying that this gentleman is at the risk of being sanctioned,” the letter said.

“We wish to add that it is regrettable that we have to intervene in these internal disputes which hinder the smooth running of the sport,” it said.

“We are sorry about the position taken by your NOC and hope that you will follow the position taken by the UCI and ACC,” the letter concluded.

This shows that the rules are being trampled. Pakistan has already been banned by the World Badminton Federation due to the existence of two parallel bodies. It has said that Pakistan’s membership would be restored only when the authorities end their dispute and endorse a single body.

Basketball, one of the sports that can gain popularity in the country, has also been hurt in similar fashion.

Pakistan Judo Federation (PJF), which did not favour the POA chief Lt Gen (retd) Arif Hasan in the elections, has also been demoralised for the last several months. Judo was dropped from the list of those disciplines that took part in the 32nd National Games in Lahore.

The POA has been seen making concerted efforts to form a parallel body in the Islamabad Olympic Association (IOA) when it suspended it a couple of months back.

But the court later declared the decision of the POA to suspend the IOA illegal. The IOA boycotted the recent National Games staged in Lahore but still the organisers managed to field a few players from the federal capital under the POA banner in the slots that ended on Friday.

The list of emerging parallel bodies will continue to swell as elections of a handful of federations are due in the near future.

The PSB, who according to the apex court’s decision, has the right to form rules and implement them, is backing those federations which are opposing Arif Hasan.

So the root cause of all the mess on the national front is the rivalry between the Board and the POA.

It is time both these organisations came to the negotiating table and resolved their differences for the sake of sports in the country, which have already suffered a lot at the hands of acts of terrorism.

73.alam@gmail.com

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