Champions Trophy Hockey: Pakistan finishes 7th

18 comments posted

Comment Pages: « 3 2 [1]

1. Faraz Khalid says:
   December 11th, 2007 1:38 pm

   It’s a simple demand and supply situation. here’s how it works:

   a) Sponsors are mostly driven by popularity and marketability of the item. Hockey (or anything for that matter) would have to be popular and marketable first, and sponsors would drop by automatically.
   b) Now how can hockey be popular? simple. The people who run the sport need to invest in the sport. Infrastructure, regional competitions, youth programs, prize money, training camps, high profile coaches, international events and all the works. Once you start to get youth involved, your team starts to do well, you keep the momentum going and the game’s popularity starts to rise. This is when you start getting private money in the form of big sponsorships, adding more fuel to the momentum. Once you start winning major tournaments, the interest level keeps going further up. You win a world cup or olympic gold, and its jackpot.
   c) The problem is that initially quite significant investment would be needed for point b to work. Is Govt willing to spend that much money on a game that seems to be dying? or should the same money (or more) be spent on reviving football?
   d) Austroturfs have made hockey very expensive. If you grow up playing on grass, you will find it difficult to adjust at international level. Again, major investment is required to make austroturf a common entity.
   e) On the flip side, we have a history to go by. And have been producing good hockey players. So the return on investment in hockey might still be higher than that on football. Afterall, it is still more likely for Pakistan to win a Hockey world cup, compared to a football world cup.

2. Ahmad R. Shahid says:
   December 11th, 2007 1:06 pm

   Yeah I think we should stop trying to excel in Hockey and do something better. There is always the opportunity cost associated with everything. Rather than trying to revitalize Hockey better spend those resources on more useful things where the ratio of output to input is greater than in hockey. We should forget about the “national game” crap. Its old thinking. Welcome aboard the new age!

   Please don’t bring the government to such minor issues, when it is more busy hijakcing judicial activism and making us free of any notions of basic human rights.

   Also the private sector should not be expected to jump into the fray. It would only do so if there is money to be made, which we all know can’t be made in this game of yore. We should rather ask the cricket board, what has it achieved in Cricket on which we spend a lot of money and we appoint only the lackeys of the President-(R) General to head its bodies.

3. Ahmad R. Shahid says:
   December 11th, 2007 1:06 pm

   Yeah I think we should stop trying to excel in Hockey and do something better. There is always the opportunity cost associated with everything. Rather than trying to revitalize Hockey better spend those resources on more useful things where the ratio of output to input is greater than in hockey. We should forget about the “national game” crap. Its old thinking. Welcome aboard the new age!

   Please don’t bring the government to such minor issues, when it is more busy hijakcing judicial activism and making us free of any notions of basic human rights.

   Also the private sector should not be expected to jump into the fray. It would only do so if there is money to be made, which we all know can’t be made in this game of yore. We should rather ask the cricket board, what has it achieved in Cricket on which we spend a lot of money and we appoint only the lackeys of the President-(R) General to head its bodies. Musharraf, the president of PCB, should answer the failures of our cricket team.

4. Kashif Hussain says:
   December 11th, 2007 9:35 am

   The challenge with hockey is not as trivial, there are a lot of things, atleast in my mind
   1. Sponsorship
   2. Grass root level appreciation
   3. Resources (proper ground will be the key one)
   4. Charisma (Hockey has lost that long time ago)
   5. Proper training
   6. Leadership
   7. Key would be the interest

   In all fairness why would we expect a kid to pick up the hockey stick vs. a cricket bat when there is no future for that kid

5. Nayab Khan says:
   December 11th, 2007 7:08 am

   The stick itself is not that expensive in pak. I bought slazenger hockey from faisalabad, costed me Rs.2300, but in UK same stick is 250 pounds (28,000 Rs). The problem is the pitch, astro turf is expensive to buy and maintain, our national team practices in army’s hockey stadium (rawalpindi). Sadly, that is the only one well maintained.

   The government can put money in to promote a sport but that has to follow by private sector who sponcer teams and players. This follows by public spending money for entertainment.
   The government hasn’t put any money in eihter hockey or football. Even if it does, the private sector will not do enough. Our industrialists are hopeless!

   I think, there should be more inter school tournaments, that might help.

6. Did u grow up playing Hockey? says:
   December 11th, 2007 6:18 am

   Hockey is a dying sport, city kids do not play this game, there is no money in this game, our players do not have physical fitness, infrastructure is lacking, its time that Pakistan should stop playing this retarded game and invest money into more global and regional games like football.

7. Ahmad R. Shahid says:
   December 11th, 2007 3:10 am

   Well even if we don’t do geat in hockey, its not that important. Sports on average is on the decline in Pakistan as they have been in India. It seems like both India and Pakistan are facing similar problems in sports.

8. Aqil Sajjad says:
   December 11th, 2007 2:44 am

   I think sponsorship is also somewhat related to electronic media hype and coverage. When a sport is given some projection, it naturally creates more interest among the people and automatically starts to draw sponsors too. In recent years, cricket has been getting a lot more coverage in the electronic media than cricket. This difference is not just due to the decline of hockey; after all, our cricket team’s performance is not much better than the hockey team. To revive media interest in hockey, the govt needs to push PTV to give more coverage to the game.

   Then of course there are two more very important factors going against hockey. One is the fact that you need every player to have a hockey stick. In cricket, you just need one bat, which makes it a really convenient game for the general public. Secondly, you need a smooth surface to play proper hockey, and this has become all the more important after the introduction of the astroturf. In cricket, you can manage with a somewhat uneven surface.

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