KARACHI, 12 August 2005 — The inaugural edition of the Super Hockey League penciled in for Karachi next month seems doomed to end as a super flop.
Touted as an exact replica of India’s Premier Hockey League held in the South Indian city of Hyderabad earlier this year in a highly-successful manner, the Super League to be played from Sept. 8 to 18 here at the Hockey Club of Pakistan Stadium lacks several basic ingredients required to make it a success.
First of all, the six-team contest will be played without the country’s best-known hockey star, Sohail Abbas. The short corner specialist is undoubtedly the most sought-after hockey player in the country and without him the league would be without the sort of spice that only a player of his caliber can add to it.
Sohail fell out with the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) following his last December’s retirement from international hockey. Apparently he would be playing professional hockey in Holland this fall.
Then it seems that somebody forgot to tell the league’s organizers that you have to create some hype ahead of such an event.
When the Indians came out with their PHL, they did it after doing their homework. An extensive television and newspaper campaign assured that cricket-crazy India would notice that something cool was about to happen on the hockey field.
Top stars like Sachin Tendulkar were roped in to help create the hype. It worked.
With less than a month left in the Sept. 8 start of the Super League, there are no signs of any similar build-up taking place ahead of the Pakistani version of the PHL.
The event’s timing, too, is far from being ideal. September is one of the hottest months in Karachi and it would be difficult to lure fans to the HCP with the mercury fluctuating somewhere in the over 30s.
The timing is also imperfect because most of the other countries already have established league events going on during September, which is one of the reasons why the Super League will just have to rely on a handful of Indian players to add foreign flavor in the contest.
Then the formation of the teams also underlines inconsistency on the part of whoever finalized the list.
The teams include several former players well into their late 30s or even early 40s. And at the same time much younger players like the 1994 World Cup hero Kamran Ashraf and Sydney Olympian Mohammad Anis have been overlooked by the anonymous selectors.
Players like Rahim Khan, Malik Shafqat and Mohammad Sarwar have been selected in various teams, two of them as captains. The trio either played their hockey with or before Kamran and Anis.
Then several unknown players have also managed to get the selectors’ nod while a number of promising youngsters like Karachi’s Mohammad Asim are surprisingly missing from a list of 107 players.
When the details of the league were announced by the PHF President Tariq Kirmani earlier this year, the major reason behind it was to promote hockey and allow youngsters a chance to show their skills. It remains to be seen whether those target would be achieved by fielding old horses like Rahim Khan and Malik Shafqat in the contest.
The names of the participating teams fail to impress either. Sindh Qalandars. Are we talking about a professional hockey team or a band of Sufis? Northern Cavaliers doesn’t sound any good either. Neither does Capital Dynamos.
To add to all this, there was a controversy on the day PHF announced the league’s format at a press conference in Lahore. One of the former Olympians whose name was included as manager of a participating team made it clear he had nothing to with the league.
All in all, the Super League has failed to live up to expectations even before its opening match. Whether it would fare any better when the actual competition gets underway remains to be seen.
