Pakistan won't recall Abbas for Commonwealth Games

KARACHI: Sohail Abbas, Pakistan's record-breaking hockey player, will not feature in October's Commonwealth Games (CWG) in New Delhi as the country's hockey bosses have decided against including the veteran player in the national team.

A top Pakistan Hockey Federation official said on Wednesday that Abbas will not be invited for the preparatory camp for the October 3-14 Games because Pakistan doesn't need the short corner expert, who holds the record of scoring the highest number of goals in international hockey, anymore.

"We will not be inviting Abbas for the Commonwealth Games camp, we don't need him anymore," said Asif Bajwa.

Abbas skipped the team's training camp for the Europe tour last month and instead opted for the Bangladeshi League without informing the PHF, after he was disgruntled on his omission from the team for the Azlan Shah tournament.

Bajwa said the federation played its role by inviting the drag flick specialist repeatedly and will not ask him again to join the camp.

He also claimed that the team performed well in the Europe tour and did not miss the veteran player as Pakistan attempted to retain its lost status in hockey.

"The team showed improvement in Europe, where we achieved satisfactory results without Abbas," he said.

Pakistan will prepare for the CWG in two phases. The first phase will begin with a training camp in Abbottabad Aug 12-26. The team will then fly for a training camp to the Netherlands Sep 1-20. Bajwa said that chief selector Hanif Khan would announce the list of probables soon.

Meanwhile, Bajwa expressed satisfaction over the performance of Michel Van Den Heuvel, the team's new coach from the Netherlands, following the Europe tour which was the Dutchman's first assignment in the role.

Pakistan drew three matches against Spain, won the only battle against France and drew two matches against Holland during their two-week long sojourn.

Bajwa, who accompanied the team in Europe, said he saw positive changes in the team.

"There were some notable changes in the team. The coach has brought positive changes and we are happy with his performance. Heuvel is currently in Netherlands and will be returning before the Abbottabad camp to supervise the team's training. Heuvel will be back early next month to join the team and we are hoping for better results under him in the Commonwealth Games," he said.

Abbas overlooked for Pakistan's CWG and Asian Games squads

Pakistan's hockey selectors Thursday ignored veteran drag-flick ace Sohail Abbas for the preliminary squad for this year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi and Asian Games in Guangzhou, China.

A 25-man provisional squad was named by the national selection committee for a series of training camps ahead of the two major events.

The seasoned defender, who holds the record for the highest number of goals in international hockey, apparently paid the price for skipping a training camp earlier this summer.

However, Pakistan's chief selector Hanif Khan tried to make it clear that Sohail's omission had nothing to do with his decision to skip the training camp.

'We haven't selected Sohail Abbas because we don't need him any more,' said Hanif, an Olympian. Hanif stressed that Pakistan has a number of youngsters capable enough to fill in for Sohail.

'We have found some good young boys on our team's Europe tour especially Muhammad Tauseeq who converted penalty corners in matches against Holland and Spain earlier this month,' said Hanif.

Meanwhile, Sohail who recently returned home from Dhaka after featuring in the Bangladesh League is featuring in the Quaid-e-Azam Gold Cup Hockey Tournament - a major domestic event - in Karachi. He has been in prolific form, scoring four goals in two matches in the event so far.

Pakistan Hockey Federation

Hockey was originally brought to Pakistan under British rule, and like cricket soon became popular with the local population.

The Pakistan Hockey Federation came into being in 1948, following the independence and partition into Pakistan and India. Prior to this players from what is now Pakistan had competed internationally alongside players from what is now India. In the beginning, the Federation's membership included the Provincial Hockey/Sports Associations of West Punjab, East Bengal, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Bahawalpur & Services Sports Board. Pakistan played their first international in London when they defeated Belgium 2-1 in 14th Olympic Games hockey tournament on 2 August 1948.

The first President of PHF was Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan with Baseer Ali Sheikh as Honorary Secretary. The Pakistan national side soon established a strong reputation in international competition, helping to mainatin interest in the game in Pakistan which assisted the growth of the Federation. However, no full-time central office or secretariat, as such, was established until the 1960s.

The office of the Pakistan Hockey Federation, located in Gaddafi Cricket Stadium, Lahore, was developed into a Secretariat in 1971. It was during the second term as president of Air Marshal M. Nur Khan from 1978 that Pakistani hockey entered something of a golden age. National Senior, National Junior and Women Hockey Teams were all competing internationally, increasing the work load of PHF Office and secretary Brigadier M.H.Atif tremendously.

On the personal initiative of Air Marshal M. Nur Khan, the FIH introduced the World Cup Tournament and the Champions Trophy Tournament, which are now rated amongst the major international tournaments, alongside the Olympics. At this time, Pakistan held all the major titles in men's international hockey.

However, the 1976 Olympics in Montreal had seen the introduction of artificial turf to international hockey competition. Pakistan was unable to build as many of the new pitches as the European nations or Australia and New Zealand and so the strength of the national side declined. It was after a lapse of 12 years that the Pakistan Hockey Team again started climbing and won the Champions Trophy and the World Cup with Air Vice Marshal Farooq Umar as president and Colonel Mudassar as secretary of the Federation.

The PHF has provincial teams who play against each other such as; Baloch Lions, Capital Dynamos, East Bengal Tigers (1947-1970) = see Bangladesh Hockey Team, Frontier Falcon, Sindh Qalanders, Shan-e-Punjab and Northern Cavaliers.

In recent times, the Pakistan Hockey Team has seen some lacklustre performances and has failed to win a major hockey tournament since the 1994 World Cup, mainly due to lack of proper nurturing of youth, administrative problems, increasing apathy towards the game by public in favour of cricket, and unstable player-coach relationships.

Pakistan national field hockey team

After the poor performances following the 2010 Hockey World Cup the coach Shahid Ali Khan was sacked along with several other senior personnel and the entire squad announced their voluntary retirment following the poor performances however the PHF President refused to accept their resignations and the players continue to play for the team. It also emerged that the squad had been forced to annonce their retirment by a Asif Bajwa a senior official.^[3] Former Pakistani hockey player Shahbaz Ahmad announced that he would be willing to coach the team for free and he had been approached by the PHF however he also mentioned that he would not take the position unless Asif Bajwa was sacked.^{[4] [5]} Following this restructure the squad has seen somewhat of a resurgence with a 5-5 draw against the mighty Australians who won the 2010 Hockey World Cup.^[6] They also thrashed egypt 6-2. ^[7] The PHF is currently on the hunt for a foreign coach but presently gave the assignment of coaching to Khawaja Junaid.^[8] German coach Paul Lissek along with Australian Barry Dancer and Dutch coach Michel van den Heuvel was on the list however because of the current security situation it wasn't possible ^[9] The Dutch coach Michael van den Heuvel landed in Pakistan to come to agreement with the hockey federation for a possible coaching stint with the team. ^[10] While a deal is being planned Kwahaja Junaid returned to coaching the junior team while Manzoor Hussain has been appointed as the temporary coach of the team.^[11] A few days later the Pakistan Hockey Federation announced that Michel van den Heuvel has been appointed as pakistan hockey coach ^[12] with a pay of 10,000 euros. [13

Bangalore leads Google FIFA

India ranks third after South Africa (which hosts the event) and Indonesia, leaving all the other European countries behind,” Google said in a statement on Tuesday, Jun 8.

While it is a surprise that the cricket-crazy country is showing this much interest in a football event, Karnataka has emerged on top of the state list, pushing aside the football citadels of the country - Kerala and West Bengal.

In further regional break down, the country's IT hub and Karnataka's capital city, Bangalore has emerged on the top of the list of cities interested in FIFA World Cup 2010.Bangalore, which is followed by Mumbai and Delhi, has 100 points in Google’s Search Volume Index, which is derived based on the optimum number of searches from a city or a region.

Bangalore's entry into the list can be attributed to the net savvy youngsters as well as its cosmopolitan crowd. It is fueled further by the fact that the net savvy people from Kolkata and other cities have migrated to the south Indian city.

Online attackers profit from 2010 FIFA World Cup

According to Symantec, criminals compromise web servers hosted by well-known hosting providers and infect them with malware that generates poisoned links by associating the domains of known compromised web hosts with search terms from Google Trends.

The criminals are able to push their results up higher in the Google results page by leveraging the fact that Google ranks search results of domains that are more ‘interconnected’ higher, according to Symantec.

Once you click their poisoned search results you are re-directed to a fake AV (antivirus) site. The goal, as ever, is to get their bogus software out to as many victims as possible, and the excitement around the World Cup presents a golden opportunity.

Fake web pages are often designed to look like the user interfaces of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. After the users run the fake scan, they are offered a file named packupdate[RANDOM NUMBER]_195.exe to eliminate the problems and malware that were allegedly present.

Symantec's researchers have noticed that search engines such as Google are doing a good job at flagging and filtering out poisoned search terms from their search results. However, football fans are warned to be careful when searching for official World Cup 2010 information and advised to stick to legitimate news sites.

FIFA 2010: Final Spain Vs Netherlands

Unlike the opening ceremony, closing ceremony at the 2010 World Cup Stadium, Soccer City, Johannesburg, Monday (12 / 7) in the morning local time, will present the attractions of youth of Africa's colorful, make a party for the first time on the African continent will always be remembered.

Derek Carstens, Chairman of Marketing Committee of promises, the closing ceremony will take place by displaying the distinctive tastes of young African, contemporary art technology combined with world level. "Of the first World Cup in Africa has shown the uniqueness, passion and warmth of this continent and its people. Ceremony closure will be dedicated to honor the spirit, "said Carstens.

Although the final match Netherlands vs. Spain will take place at 20:30 (01:30 AM GMT), the event will have entertainment starting at 18:30 setempat.Upacara closing time will last for 30 minutes and broadcast live to 215 countries, including Indonesia. FIFA predicts at least 500 million pairs of eyes will see the end of the month-long party full of it.

Piala Dunia FIFA 2010: Final - Some important things that deserve to be remembered in connection with Intertwine Akbar is:
MascotEdition of the tournament's official mascot Zakumi this. Zakumi is a leopard is yellow, with hair "quirky" in green, wearing a shirt that read "South Africa 2010", and green shorts, and was holding a ball. Zakumi was born on June 16, 1994, to coincide with Youth Day in South Africa so that will be celebrated globally by 2010 FIFA World Cup crown.
Zakumi's name comes from the word "Za", which is a two-letter code for South Africa and "Kumi", a word that means ten in various African languages.