More wrongs than rights
The just-concluded Premier Division Hockey League, which has been hailed for bringing all the big names of domestic hockey together after a long gap of 45 months, produced a new champion and a few promising players, but the league also drew attention for quite a few wrong reasons.
The return of Mohammedan SC and eventual champions Dhaka Mariner Youngs Club is probably the most pleasing aspect of the league. But the way the game's governing body handled issues, especially confronting the indiscipline shown by players and club officials on a daily basis, left a lot to be pessimistic about.
“The big achievement is that clubs and players participated in the league after a long gap, however, there were a lot of mentionable loopholes,” said Usha coach Mamunur Rashid, who guided his side to a second place finish behind champions Mariner Youngs Club.
“Impatience was common among club officials and players, yet we did not see any effective step taken by the league committee against any official or player,” added Mamunur, who is also a member of the BHF executive committee.
Players and officials arguing local or foreign umpires' decisions was a common occurrence during the league. It sometimes even got to a point where match officials or opposition players were assaulted. However, the league committee has hardly taken any steps as of yet to punish those players and officials involved. The performance of the foreign umpires was not satisfactory either as clubs won numerous reviews after going through the newly-introduced referral system.
“The federation wanted to complete the league in whatever way it could and overlooked incidents one after another. Such an approach inspired trouble-makers. The vandalism at the VIP box in the league's last match was the outcome of the federation's apathy,” said Abahani coach Mahabub Harun, who also believes the attraction of the league and the standard of play was not that good.
“There was little attraction in the league, and the standard of the game did not increase despite the inclusion of five foreign players. Except for a few, the performance of most players was average,” added Harun, who helped his side finish third in the 12-team table.
“The league did not complete the way it should have. There were no security measures taken for coaching staff, players, officials and umpires during the matches. Fear always prevailed among all at all times and we did not even notice the presence of the league committee,” said Mohammedan coach Jamal Haider, whose side finished fourth.
Mamunur Rashid, however, suggested that the game's governing body should first review the positive and negative sides and find out exactly where and how the committee failed to address the issues.
However, all three coaches admitted that there were some emerging players, who can be called up for the national team to make up for the failures of the senior players like Kamruzzaman Rana, Imran Hasan Pintoo, Ashim Gope, Krishna Kumar, Zahid Hossain, Hasan Jubair Niloy, Tapash Barman and others.
Arshad Hossain, Fazle Hossain Rabbi, Rezaul Karim Babu, Mahbub Hossain and Rocky are among those who staged good performances while current national players Sarwar Hossain, Rumman Sarker, Pushkor Khisha Mimo, Shitul Ahmed, Ashraful Islam, national discards Abu Sayeed Nippon, Belal Hossain and Ajit Kumar were notable performers as well.
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