SA training tour to harness skill for Asian Junior Hockey: Butt

KARACHI—The seven-match training tour to South Africa will help in harnessing the skill of Pakistan juniors in build-up for Asian Under-21 Hockey Championship to be held in July.
These observations were made here on Friday by Pakistan Junior Hockey Team Manager cum-Chief Coach Jehangir Butt before the team’s training session at Hockey Club of Pakistan Stadium.
“South African tour will greatly help the team because home teams are both African champions in seniors and juniors and play the game the hardway,” he said. Pakistan junior team is due to leave for Durban en-route Johannesburg for a 12-day trip on April 15. “South Africans play in a tough manner that will offer the team good competitive atmosphere and good preparations for Asian event,” he maintained.
“Our main objectives will be to improve our gray areas particularly in goal-keeping and deep defence. We also wants to improve the scoring power of penalty corner strikers,” he added.
He said goal-keeping department let Pakistan juniors down in 8-nation event in Malaysia in January and that is why Imran Shah was replaced with Muhammad Khurram. He said Pakistani youngsters converted eight short corners out of 23 they secured and Butt wanted to increase the ratio with little bit of extra effort.
Ex-Olympian Jehangir Butt said they got good penalty strikers in Kashif Ali, Muhammad Atiq and Zaheer Ahmed. Pakistan Manager said performance of the forward line in Malaysia was satisfactory as they scored highest number of 21 field goals during the event.
He said Haseem Khan, Inayatullah, captain Shafqat Rasool and Muhammad Zubair were outstanding. However he made it clear that he was looking forward for much better performance from his forwards during the tour of Proteas. He said as Pakistan junior team will be playing two test matches against South African senior and five against their juniors, it will provide him an opportunity to field every player during the 7 matches.
Jehangir Butt said juniors are going through rigorous training programme and expressed the hope the team will put in their best in Durban where all the matches will be played.—Agencies