RAWALPINDI - Azlan Shah Cup 2012 concluded on a very dismal note for the green shirts as they finished last in the seven-nation event which was the last major event for the team to gain big match practice, which they wasted before the Olympics 2012.

Ex-Olympian Shahnaz Sheikh said this while talking to TheNation on Thursday. He said: “It is very painful for me to digest this humiliation because I was the manager of team in 2003 when last time Pakistan won this prestigious tournament.”
Winning only one match and that too against Argentina who had reached Malaysia just eight hours from the start of their match and they were tired otherwise Pakistan could have lost that match as well and after that win instead of keeping the momentum going, the national team lost six consecutive matches, he added.
“Green shirts even failed to win the match against Malaysia who are no 14 in the ranking. Pakistan scored nine goals and conceded 16 goals due to their poor defence”, he said and added: “This result also exposed the so-called claim of the PHF being among top four in the mega event like Olympic Games where top 12 teams of the world are participating and Pakistan is placed in pool A with the likes of Australia, Spain, England, Argentina and South Africa.”
“If one accepts the claims of the PHF that we currently lie among the top four nations then we have to believe that team should get 10 points by beating three teams and one draw and one loss in his pool which I think is almost impossible keeping in mind of present and the last four years performance in which Pakistan played four mega events including Olympics, World Cup, Commonwealths Games and Champions Trophy in which we scored 37 goals and conceded 63 goal and finished at 8th in Olympics, 12th in World Cup, 6th in Commonwealth Games and 7th in Champions Trophy respectively and the team’s world ranking has gone down from 6th to 8th,” he said and added: “Despite getting hefty amount of almost Rs 70 to 80 million from government, the PHF top brass has failed to justify spending such amount in the right direction.”
He said the major problem of the team is high goal missing ratio which was the major cause of defeats, consequently team got under pressure especially deep defence and team in the last 15 minutes looked exhausted in almost all the matches. “As we know in the modern hockey if you miss one goal scoring opportunity, it means you are down by two goals, as missing of goal is worse than playing defensive.”
“As a technocrat, the above mentioned things are the main problems and if in a short time we are able to overcome these flaws, there is still chance we might finish among the top six in Olympics,” he said.
“On the other hand, I have received calls suggesting withdrawal of the team from Olympics to avoid humiliated defeat, therefore, I suggested the defecation to weed out the roots causes which of high missing goal scoring ratio as this poison is being penetrated in the whole body of the team consequently team lost the match even after reasonable starts,” he said.
“The PHF management should be immediately step down in the lager interest of the game otherwise this nightmare might be turned into tsunami in the Olympics,” Shahnaz concluded.