LAHORE: Vowing to produce an improved show in the FIH Pro League matches next month, Pakistan hockey team’s captain Ammad Butt on Saturday said that victories against arch-rivals India could start revival of the national game.

“The Pakistan-India matches are always enjoyed by the entire world. Therefore, I think our hockey’s revival will start if we win the forthcoming matches against India in the Pro League,” Ammad said during an exclusive interview to Dawn here at the National Hockey Stadium where the national training camp for the Pro League matches is in progress.

Pakistan in the next leg of the 2025-26 Pro League are set to play two matches each against Belgium and Spain in Belgium from June 13 to 20. The Ammad-led squad then face England and India in a couple of games each in England from June 23 to 27.

Pakistan, the former four-time world champions, then compete in the Aug 15-30 World Cup to be co-hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands.

“India, who won bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, have a decent side. However, we will focus on winning against them not only to improve our world ranking but also to qualify for the next edition of the Pro League,” the skipper added.

Ammad said that Pakistan’s participation in the first eight matches of the 2025-26 Pro League — against Holland and Argentina, staged in Argentina, and against Germany and Australia, held in Australia — helped his team a lot to qualify for the World Cup after eight years.

“And now our participation in the next eight matches of the Pro League will also prepare our team to perform well in the World Cup.”

WORLD CUP SEMIS MAIN TARGET

The skipper said, “Our main target is to play the semi-final of the World Cup in order to improve our ranking. And the next target is to win [this year’s] Asian Games title to directly qualify for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

“No doubt teams like India, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia will be tough opponents in the Asian Games. However, after having played the World Cup [by that time] we will be in a better position to achieve the target of qualifying for the Olympics,” the captain said.

“We are undergoing strenuous training at the [ongoing] national camp under the coaching panel headed by Manzoor-ul-Hasan Senior,” he further said.

Commenting on Pakistan’s very ordinary performance in the Pro League in which they lost all the matches, Ammad reckoned that though the team had lost those matches the results were not that bad.

“My boys produced good performances and we learnt a lot from those eight matches which also increased our experience after playing against the world’s higher-ranked teams,” he said.

“And you will see better results from us in the remaining eight matches of the Pro League.”

Responding to a question regarding the team’s weak areas, the skipper underlined that they needed to work harder to improve defence and penalty-corner conversion.

“In coming days we will be more focused on bringing improvement in defense areas and in converting the penalty-corner and furthermore another key area is to bring more improvement in fitness,” he said.

“In the remaining days of the training camp we will try to overcome all these shortcomings.”

To a question, Ammad said that there was a considerable difference between Asian and European hockey.

“Though we have played many finals in Asian-level competitions, competing against European teams we noticed there is a lot of difference in the standard of the two continents, [particularly] if anyone compares the structure and [physical] fitness level,” he noted.

In the previous Pro League matches, the captain said, Pakistan team’s fitness standard was not at its peak but still “credit goes to the boys who worked hard and with combined efforts they delivered their best”.

“In Australia, we played much improved hockey in the Pro League and learnt many new points. In the next round of the league you will see a clear difference in our performance,” he pledged.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2026