11th place

Pakistan's hockey team beat South Africa 4-3 in a penalty shootout on Friday to finish 11th at the FIH Hockey World Cup in Amstelveen. It is a miserable finish for a four-time champion nation, no better in substance than the 12th place secured in 2010 and 2018, and no real advance on missing the tournament altogether in 2014 and 2023. Set against recent history, this is not progress. Set against what Pakistan hockey once was, it is confirmation of a decline that shows little sign of reversing.

The manner of the win does nothing to soften that. Trailing 2-0 inside the first quarter, Pakistan clawed back, finishing the match 4-4 with a last minute equaliser. In the shootout itself, Rana Waheed Ashraf missed a stroke that would have ended the contest outright before captain Ammad Butt held his nerve to finish it. A team that needs a stoppage-time rescue and a missed opposition chance just to beat a mid-tier side has nothing worth defending in its performance. Eleventh place in a sixteen-team World Cup means Pakistan did not escape the group phase and spent the tournament's second half competing for placement rather than for a medal. India was the only genuinely competitive side in the group, and England underperformed through the tournament, leaving a route to the second round that a side with any real ambition should have taken. Pakistan let it go unclaimed. A programme that once produced four World Cup titles and three Olympic golds now fields a mid-table side whose best current ambition is edging mid-tier teams.

The challenges are foundations. The domestic league gives players too little competitive hockey between World Cups. Promising talent keeps drifting toward club contracts abroad rather than staying to build a national core. What the federation owes the team now is a plan that repairs the qualification pathway and gives players a functioning domestic circuit to return to.