KARACHI, 28 February 2007 — Pakistan on Monday brought back former Olympian Islahuddin Siddiqui to prepare their depleted hockey team for next year’s Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) announced that Islah has been appointed as manager and chief coach of the national team on a contract that would run at least till next August’s Olympics.
In a bid to bring more professionalism in the training setup, the PHF has decided to give Islah a paid job and is in return expecting the former Pakistan captain to put the team back on track.
“We have appointed Islah till the Beijing Olympics and hopefully his contract would go beyond that assignment,” PHF secretary Akhtar-ul-Islam told Arab News.
It is a paid job and we are looking forward to an improvement in our team’s performance in the coming months, he said.
Akhtar said that the PHF would give Islah a free hand in appointing his team of support staff that would include at least two coaches, a physiotherapist and a video analyst.
He said that there are chances that the PHF might appoint a foreign trainer to assure that the players get best possible physical training.
Islah counted among the legends of hockey had an illustrious career as an influential forward for Pakistan between 1967-79, a period during which he won a bagful of medals including World Cup triumphs in 1971 and 1978.
Previously he was chief coach of the Pakistan team on three different occasions between 1983 and 2000.
His previous stint as the team’s head coach ended unceremoniously after Pakistan lost in the semifinals of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.
As a coach, Islah has had mixed fortunes with some seeing him as a man who brought stability to the team while others rejecting him largely as a failure with no major title-winning triumph as an official.
Islah said that he has taken up this latest assignment as a challenge.
“Our team is not in a very good shape and the Beijing Games is also not very far away. But I have accepted this assignment as a challenge and would give my best to help the side bring an improvement in the coming months,” he said.
Islah, who led Pakistan to the 1978 World Cup triumph in Buenos Aires, said that he would soon be meeting top officials of the PHF including its president Zafarullah Khan Jamali before forming his future strategy.
“Jamali has given me an important responsibility something which I have also accepted as my national duty,” he said.
Islah would also soon be meeting several of his old teammates in a bid to get their advise on how to lift the under-performing Pakistan team to new heights.
“I have great regard for my fellow Olympians and hope to get their support in the campaign to improve the team.”
Pakistan’s performance at the international stage has dipped in the past years and they even failed to reach the final of last December’s Asian Games in Doha.
“You can see that our team has been finishing fifth or sixth in major tournaments in the last five or six years,” said Islah. “We will have to start doing better than that to have a chance of regaining the Olympic title in Beijing.”
Islah’s charges are scheduled to go to Malaysia for the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup — their first international assignment this year — in May.
The national team would start preparing for the seven-nation tournament at a preparatory camp scheduled to begin in the first week of April in Islamabad.
Islah said that he would soon name the coaches who would assist him in the training camp apart from other members on his support staff.
