Will Pakistan be able to find apt replacements? |
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28-Feb-2012
our correspondent
KARACHI: Pakistan’s hockey players and officials will assemble in Lahore on Wednesday (tomorrow) with a huge task confronting them ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games in London.
In a stunning development earlier this month, national selectors decided to dump three of the country’s leading players and now the team officials will have to identify and prepare other players to take up responsibilities previously performed by the axed trio.
To find apt replacements for at least two of the axed players is expected to be an uphill task for team officials as they get ready for the first phase of their Olympic training camp which will get underway at Lahore’s National Hockey Stadium from March 1.
The players dropped from Pakistan’s preliminary Olympic squad included their captain Muhammad Imran and influential midfielder Waseem Ahmed. Till a few weeks the duo were counted among Pakistan’s key players and seemed sure of places in the country’s 16-man Olympic squad.
Waseem, a former Pakistan captain served as the backbone of Pakistan’s midfield and also performed the role of their playmaker. Imran had been shouldering the responsibility of their top man in deep defence for the last several years.
Pakistan will find it tough to prepare able replacements for the duo but team manager Khawaja Junaid is confident that the Greenshirts won’t miss them in London.
“We have solid bench strength and I’m confident that over the next few months, we will be able to raise a strong team for the Olympics,” Junaid, a former Olympian, told ‘The News’ on Monday.
Junaid said that Pakistan have divided their final phase of preparations into three legs with the first one getting underway this week. “In the first phase, we will focus on underling the roles and responsibilities of the players, among other things,” said Junaid.
Pakistan are planning to host a few international teams next month which means that the players will get off training for around ten days. They will reassemble for the second phase in April to get ready for May’s Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia.
In the third and final phase, according to Junaid, the officials will focus on helping the players to gain more and more mental strength in a bid to ready them for tough matches during the Olympics to be held during July-August. Michel van den Heuvel, Pakistan’s Dutch coach, will arrive in Lahore tomorrow to supervise the training camp.
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