Daily Times

LAHORE: On 8th August 2022, Pakistan concluded their campaign at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 with just eight medals. In all, Pakistan won two gold, three silver and three bronze medals, improving their record on the previous Commonwealth Games 2018 held in Gold Coast, Australia, (21st edition) where they won just five medals: one gold and four bronze. India won 22 gold, 16 silver and 23 bronze medals at the 22nd edition of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Pakistan won two gold medals through Nooh Dastigir Butt (weightlifting) and Arshad Nadeem (athletics). It is interesting to note that Nadeem’s feat brought Pakistan’s first athletics medal at the Commonwealth Games since 1966 and a first javelin gold for the country, bettering Mohammad Nawaz’s silver at the inaugural edition of the quadrennial multi-sport spectacle in 1954 and Jalal Khan’s second-placed finish in 1958. Pakistan won their remaining three silver and three bronze through wrestlers and judo players. Pakistan, a nation of 220 million, was represented by just 68 athletes at Birmingham, which clearly shows sports are no longer our priority. There is no doubt that country’s sports, once having so much pride and passion, have gone to the dogs.

When Pakistan emerged on the map of the world on 15th August 1947, its athletes soon started showing their muscles in the Asian and world arenas. Sports, perhaps, became the only bearer of good news in Pakistan. Starting from the early years, the likes of Abdul Khaliq in athletics, squash legend Hashim Khan, cricketers and hockey players gave the country an identity at the international level. Olympic conquests, World Cup-winning triumphs in hockey, cricket, squash and even snooker, Pakistan almost always punched above its weight in the field of sports. Between 1982 and 1997, first Jahangir Khan and then Jansher Khan won every British Open, the premier squash tournament in the world. Pakistan in squash, the toughest of racket games, looked invincible.

There was a time when Pakistan hockey held all the major titles and remained up in the clouds for more than three decades. Pakistan won the Classic Triple in hockey — simultaneous holders of the Asian Games, World Cup and Olympic titles. They accomplished this feat twice. In 1971, Pakistan won the World Cup in Barcelona, after having won the 1970 Asian Games title in Bangkok, and the Olympic title in Mexico City in 1968. In 1984, Pakistan once again accomplished the Classic Triple when they defeated Germany in the final to win the 1984 Olympic hockey gold at Los Angeles. In 1982, they had won the Asian Games title in New Delhi, as well as the World Cup in Mumbai earlier that year. Pakistan are the only Asian team to have won the FIH Champions Trophy thrice — they won in 1978 (Lahore), 1980 (Karachi) and 1994 (Lahore). Pakistan won the World Cup four times — 1971 (Barcelona), 1978 (Buenos Aires), 1982 (Mumbai) and 1994 (Sydney). Pakistan hockey has been most successful at the Asian Games. Pakistan’s records at the Asian level are unmatchable. Pakistan have won the Asian Games gold medal eight times: 1958, 1962, 1970, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1990 and 2010; this is also the highest number of times a country has come first.

Modern sports structures all over the world have sports institutions as integral components of their systems. Even Bangladesh has one. It is unfortunate that after 75 years we have not been able to establish one. Sports are neither a burden on national economy nor an impediment to development, but an engine for economy and development and means to strengthen the socio-economic order. It is indeed a force multiplier to strengthen the federation and promote peace and harmony among provinces. Pakistan sports desperately need qualified human resource in terms of coaches, trainers, physios, sports psychologists, administrators, sport medicines experts, and referees. The dismal state of sports affairs of the country should be a wake-up call for the government, and the sporting authorities.

But the last two decades have been a different story altogether. Pakistan won their last Olympic medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Cricket World Cup in 1992, Hockey World Cup in 1994 and World Snooker Championship in 1994. There have been successes like the 2009 World Twenty20 title, IBSF World Snooker Championship crowns in 2012 and 2019 and ICC Champions Trophy triumph in 2017, but such victories have been few and far between. Over the years, not one, not two but almost all sports have experienced a sharp slump in our country. It goes beyond misfortune and carelessness and instead appears to be a trend. Since 1997, five years after the country’s last Olympic medal in any sport, Pakistan’s superiority in squash is no more. Like the Olympics and hockey, squash has nothing to showcase since the 1990s. The older generation still talks and recall with great delight the spellbinding achievements of the past while the present generation only has tales of the past to live on. Despite all this, Pakistanis love sports.

Anybody outside the country who spent time watching the last two Olympic Games — Tokyo 2020 in Japan and Rio 2016 in Brazil— might not realise that sports are played in Pakistan. At the Tokyo Olympic Games 2020, held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan was represented by just ten sportspersons. Before that, at the Rio Olympic Games 2016, Pakistan had its smallest-ever contingent: just seven athletes. Since 1948, hockey had been Pakistan’s main hope for an Olympic medal. The hockey squad always formed a major part of Pakistan’s Olympic contingent. It is lamentable that Pakistan hockey is not the same force that it used to be, and failed to qualify for two consecutive Olympic Games: Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. It is sad that Tokyo 2020 was no different from Rio 2016, London 2012, Beijing 2008 or any of the preceding Olympics going back to Atlanta 1996, with Pakistan returning empty-handed from each of the last seven Olympic Games.

The sum total of Pakistan’s Olympics achievement since 1947 is ten medals. Eight in hockey, including three golds, one each in wrestling and boxing. Pakistan haven’t won a medal for 29 years. More than any other sporting occasion, the Olympics denote a country’s progress or the lack of it. Olympians are marked by their heroics, their endeavor and their struggle against the odds. Pakistan has no Olympian of note for our present generation.The fact is that Pakistan continues to nosedive further as time passes and one isn’t even sure if we have hit our lowest point yet. Currently, it is a struggle largely due to bad governance. Therefore, elimination of political influence from sports is as important as improving health, education and various other sectors.

The reasons for sports decline in Pakistan are numerous. While cricket remains hugely popular, all other sports have seen a big deterioration in the past two decades. The main being the government paying almost no attention to nurturing talented players and providing them sporting facilities and guidance. Perhaps the biggest cause for the extraordinary decline in sports in Pakistan is lack of funding and vision. In the beginning it seems that sporting success for Pakistan was heaven-sent. A country with little or no sporting infrastructure quickly rose as a force to be reckoned with in a variety of sports and that too at the Asian as well as world level. Almost all of the top national sportsmen were, more or less, self-made. Their success made us over-confident to the point that we thought it was our birthright to excel at the world level. That is one of the reasons why we failed to develop a single world-class sports academy despite the fact that Pakistan considers itself to be a sports-mad nation. What is more, with the passing away of honest, determined and towering sports leaders, the national sports bodies were occupied and taken over by cliques of non-professional people. Though sports activities continued, sports were never understood, studied and researched deeply.

It is very unfortunate that like many other institutions, sports have also failed to sustain and grow as a national priority. Sports activities in the country have been reduced to matter of chance and personal interest only. Pakistan has been showing glimpses of brilliance occasionally but that is due to individual interest, comparatively low level of international competition, fewer scientific interventions and due to existence of financial support extended to sportspeople through departments.

The 1992 World Cup victory in Australia opened the floodgates of limited overs cricket and money started flowing into cricket. In games other than cricket, unless an individual tackles all the impediments and becomes successful on his/her own strength, he/she doesn’t get any recognition. This is a major drawback in Pakistan sports. Examples can be given of our athletics, tennis, boxing, wrestling and weightlifting stars Arshad Nadeem, AisamulHaq Qureshi, Mohammad Waseem, Muhammad Inam Butt and NoohDastigir Butt. We have also failed to understand the fact that over the years sports have advanced to a different level in the world. The rules of the games have changed tremendously. In the past, sports were an art, today they are pure science. Today we are trying to win a war with bows and arrows while many of our opponents are equipped with the latest gadgetry.

Most importantly, we have ignored the mother of all sports — athletics. We follow cricket, cricket and more cricket. But we have ignored athletics at our own peril. Without producing fit and fast athletes we cannot excel in many of the sports we love and that includes cricket. Athletics is one sporting discipline not requiring large resources. Poor countries like Kenya and Ethiopia are major powers in distance running. What more depressing is that sports activities in schools, colleges and universities have touched an all-time low because of diminishing sports fields, poor systems and lack of interest in sports by young generation that have many other options to keep them occupied. But perhaps the worst aspect of this development is that educational administrators no longer feel that sports are an integral part of all decent educational systems. Some even think it is a waste of time. This is one of the main reasons why student representation in our national sports teams is becoming negligible compared to the past when most of our national teams thrived on student and university representation. This particular flaw in our educational system is one of the major causes of intolerance in our society.

It is lamentable is that Pakistan’s sports budget is the lowest in South Asia, less than that of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Government officials and private sector are not interested in investing in anything other than cricket. In dilapidated gyms and crumbling sports fields, Pakistan athletes lament the outdated equipment and obsolete training methods, which leave them struggling against foreign competitors who adhere to latest science-based techniques. The national sports federations cannot afford to hire good coaches who are familiar with modern training techniques. Our athletes are truly frustrated because mostly coaches are not literate, and they have been teaching what they taught 30 to 40 years back. Without infrastructure a lot can be done, but without techniques no one can win.

For women athletes, the conditions are even worse. They are not allowed to train outdoors, and there is hardly any familial support for talented young girls. It is said that societal barriers are coming down for women, but many women athletes don’t agree with that. Most young girls in the deeply conservative Muslim nation are pressured by their families to stop playing sports, while those with family backing face the wrath of their communities. The grassroots system is almost non-existent, children in schools rarely play a sport that is not cricket, and top athletes seldom compete against the world’s best as the cash-strapped national sports federations cannot afford to send them abroad. The insistence of Pakistan parents on making their children doctors, engineers, civil servants, businessmen, IT specialists and cricketers is one of many reasons why Pakistan is failing in producing world class sportspersons.

Governments all over the world keep sports and education as their top priority, build infrastructure, hold talent development programmes for players and promote medical sciences in sports to compete in the world of sports. India spend billions of dollars on sports, but in Pakistan it is totally opposite because sports are not our priority. Patronising only cricket and ignoring other sports is very unfair. Cricket does not have the kind of global competition that others sports have as its playing is limited to a handful of largely Commonwealth countries.

Modern sports structures all over the world have sports institutions as integral components of their systems. Even Bangladesh has one. It is unfortunate that after 75 years we have not been able to establish one. Sports are neither a burden on national economy nor an impediment to development, but an engine for economy and development and means to strengthen the socio-economic order. It is indeed a force multiplier to strengthen the federation and promote peace and harmony among provinces. Pakistan sports desperately need qualified human resource in terms of coaches, trainers, physios, sports psychologists, administrators, sport medicines experts, and referees. The dismal state of sports affairs of the country should be a wake-up call for the government, and the sporting authorities.