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How Pakistan hockey went from world-beaters to Olympic absentees
Pakistan has won a record four hockey World Cups but is now missing from its second successive Olympic Games.
Sports
Shakeel Abbasi remembers the times he donned the Pakistan national hockey team jersey.
Once a prolific striker of the men’s side, Abbasi now feels he made a “big mistake” in taking hockey on as a career when, he says, many options were open to him as a promising athlete.
“I made a big mistake by picking hockey over cricket. I was very good in both but I preferred our national sport [hockey]. Sometimes, I feel it was a big mistake,” Abbasi, a three-time Olympian, told Al Jazeera.
The 37-year-old seasoned centre-forward, once regarded as one of the best young strikers in world hockey, is able to just about make ends meet now by playing professional hockey leagues in England, the Netherlands and Malaysia.
“Even those leagues are not taking place due to the coronavirus pandemic. These definitely are testing times for me because one needs money to survive,” he said.
“This is happening to a player who has served his country for years, played in three Olympics, two World Cups and eight Champions Trophy tournaments. I pity the kids when I see them playing hockey.”
Abbasi, born the year Pakistan clinched the last of its three Olympic gold medals (Los Angeles 1984), won several medals while representing the national team more than 300 times from 2003 to 2014.
Absent from Tokyo 2020
But such is the state of hockey in Pakistan that the former captain is not alone in his struggles.
Pakistan has suffered a shocking and continuous decline from being consistently among the top four to languishing at 18th in the latest rankings.
The Tokyo Olympics are the second consecutive time that Pakistan have missed the multi-sport event. It also failed to qualify for the 2014 World Cup for the first time in history and finished a dismal 12th in the 2018 edition.
For a country that has won three Olympic golds and a record four World Cup titles, missing out on back-to-back Olympic Games is nothing less than a catastrophe for the followers.
“It’s heartbreaking to see Pakistan hockey in its current state,” hockey fan Moezuddin Qureshi, 51, told Al Jazeera.
“Pakistan’s national anthem played to honour the gold-winning team at the Olympics remains my best memory. It used to be a matter of huge pride for us. We grew up playing hockey on the streets but now our kids know nothing about the sport because we are nowhere to be seen in a sport that we ruled for decades.”