Pakistan Hockey Team will not participate in the Junior Hockey World Cup which is scheduled to be played from 8th December to 18th December. The decision was taken by the International Hockey Federation (IHF) as the Pakistani Team applied for visas after the given deadline.
Although the Pakistan Hockey Federation said last week that they have applied for the visas and are in regular touch with the Indian Embassy, IHF disclosed that no such application was received by the federation before the specified deadline.
Zain Aman, Pakistan Hockey Federation’s executive secretary, is yet to comment on this new development.
International Hockey Federation’s newly appointed president, Narinder Batra further reported that despite frequent reminders, PHF failed to comply with the regulations and showed no interest in participating in the event which will begin in a few days at Lucknow.
Despite their qualification for the event, Pakistan’s participation in the Junior Hockey World Cup remained in doubt due to the increasing tension and daily cross border engagement between the two armies.
In December 2014, Pakistani Hockey team took part in the Champions Trophy tournament held in Bhubaneswar and since then, no Pakistani Team, regardless of the sport, have taken part in amy of the events held in India.
Recently, The Pakistani Kabaddi team was also pulled out from the Kabaddi World Cup held in India last month due to security reasons and frequent protest by Indian nationals.
Meanwhile, Malaysia have replaced Pakistan in the 16-team tournament and there will be no delay in commencement of the tournament.
All this started after the Uri attacks that claimed the lives of 18 Indian Soldiers and if we go by all the recent developments, India may go for an all out boycott of Pakistan.
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29 November 2016
Rohan Jaitly