LAHORE: Pakistan hockey faces a fresh crisis and a potentially massive one in the immediate backdrop of the off-the-field fiasco the national team experienced on their just-concluded tour to Australia for the FIH Pro League second leg.
The alarming element of the brewing disaster has made the fate of the incumbent Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) uncertain as national team captain Ammad Butt in an explosive media talk on Tuesday night soon upon reaching Lahore from Australia raised serious allegations against the team management over the issue of the mismanagement during the said tour.
In a disturbing development just five before the Pakistan squad is scheduled to leave for Egypt to play the World Cup qualifiers, Ammad along with a number of senior players of the squad urged the PHF to sack the current team management comprising head coach Tahir Zaman, manager-cum-assistant coach Usman Sheikh and assistant coach Zeeshan Ashraf.
On Wednesday, Tahir, Usman and Zeeshan also held a joint press conference at the National Hockey Stadium to express their position on the matter.
Tahir also presented the tour report to the PHF, which called up Ammad and some other senior players on Thursday to listen to their point of view before taking any decision.
Amid this highly undesirable development, the PHF and the Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) are already at loggerheads, blaming each other for the fuss created during the Australia tour.
“We had to spend 12, 13 hours in Sydney under open sky. From Sydney we left for Hobart where we came to know that there was no hotel booking for our squad. The team management [on the occasion] expressed that it did not have sufficient funds to pay the hotel charges [which had been increased],” Ammad told reporters.
“I don’t know who is right or wrong. When we talked to the PSB [on the matter], they claimed that the Board had handed over funds to the team management [to meet the tour expenses]. On the other hand, the management asserted that the funds [provided] were not adequate,” the captain added.
In a depressing revelation, he added, “The players [during the tour] had to prepare their breakfast, do dishwashing and wash clothes. In this [miserable scenario], what kind of performance could a player produce for the team?”
