Tennis, Anyone ?

OCTOBER 2001 - The tragedy in Pakistan which has a wide canvas, is that either the wrong people get appointed for jobs they should not be doing or if by some mistake, the right person is appointed, then everyone else joins hands to get rid of the person. All this of course causes the train to be derailed again and again. Tennis, not given to national level disasters as witnessed in cricket or hockey, has its own villains and plotters and as we all know, they remain busy throughout the year.

As the two ITF International junior Championships carried on at Lahore, there is an undercurrent of subterfuge and a ruthless jockeying for power in the Pakistan Tennis Federation. With elections looming, a concerted attempt has been made to curtail the powers of the PTF Secretary. Mohammad Ali Akbar, a former Inter Universities Champion and top Collegiate player in the USA, has been Pakistan’s Davis Captain and Coach, taking Pakistan to unprecedented successes in reaching the finals of Davis Cup Group I in 1984. He is also Pakistan’s only internationally recognised expert in any sport, having conducted Olympic Solidarity Courses for the IOC/ITF in several countries. He is one of three Pakistanis to have competed in the USA National Championships in New York. In Pakistani terms, these credentials immediately disqualify him for any post !

Ever since his election as Secretary PTF four years ago, Ali has been at the receiving end of a destabilisation campaign orchestrated by a group led by Hameed ul Haq that had controlled tennis for the past twenty years. He survived multiple no-confidence motions and an especially brutal campaign in the media and has recently been exonerated by the PTF. This whole sordid drama came to a head early last year when, at the ITF South Asian Junior Championships in Islamabad, the Managers of the thirteen participating countries started receiving anti PTF documents and newspaper cuttings in their hotel rooms. This crisis was defused with great difficulty but then reared its ugly head once again when a former national player, was caught red handed passing out the same documents to the Manager of the Indian contingent with the request to pass it on to the ITF Director for Asia. Suresh Menon the Malaysian ITF Director, who had been already stung by a newspaper article in the Urdu press (which had been read out to him!) accusing him of minting money in collusion with PTF officials, took an understandably dim view of what he felt was anti state activity. He wrote an official complaint to the PTF asking for an inquiry. The Acting President, when approached by the Secretary PTF told him that this was a matter of national import and that it should go to the higher authorities. Since the President of Pakistan was the Chief Patron of the PTF, the case was sent to him. The President ordered that either the two sides should compromise or that the matter should be sent to the FIA. Akbar refused to compromise, feeling strongly that by compromising, he would be accepting a share of the guilt. He also felt that this sort of activity was contrary to the national interest and should be fully investigated and the perpetrators punished.

In the interim, PTF had appointed a Disciplinary Committee with Brig. Sajjad Khokhar as its head along with two officers from the Air Force and Navy and Mr. Bashir Gill from Punjab, the last gentleman truly an excellent supporter of tennis. Subsequently two more members, Saeed Hai and Syed Dilawar Abbas were appointed by the President, making a total of seven members. The Committee Chairman immediately demanded and took over the Hameed ul Haq inquiry from the Pakistan Sports Board. At the first meeting of the Committee, called on a couple of days notice and without an agenda, only four members attended and Akbar told to cooperate or quit. The legal agenda, drawn up by the Committee Secretary, was ignored and a list of complaints were presented by the Brigadier in direct contravention of all rules and the Constitution of the PTF. The committee then went into hibernation until the PTF Management Committee officially asked Brig.Khokhar to expedite the matter. Eventually, with no activity taking place, the PTF Council empowered the President PTF to handle all disciplinary matters himself. (in order to give the committee a broader base, Saifullah added two more members to the committee, Saeed Hai of Karachi and Syed Dilawar Abbas of Islamabad making a total of seven members). As soon as news of this got to Brig. Khokhar, he called up the President and demanded that he be allowed to conduct the meeting. On Khokhar’s request, only four members were invited, himself, the PAF member, the Navy member and the Committee Secretary, Akbar. Bashir Gill a member of the original committee and the two other members were not invited. There was no agenda. Akbar was kept waiting for one hour outside the GHQ while the opposition was sent for in a staff car. The meeting took the shape of a farce. No charges were made, no evidence presented. Akbar’s protests about the unconstitutionality and illegality of holding a meeting without inviting all the members and without any agenda, fell on deaf ears.

A couple of weeks later, Brig. Khokhar’s friends were let off with a warning while the Secretary, was found guilty of acts, which let alone being discussed in the meeting, he had no knowledge of. No evidence was presented. The minutes proved this. The report had the signatures of the three defence officers, while it had not been shown to the Secretary nor was the PTF Secretariat given a copy. When contacted by the press one of the signees confessed that he had no knowledge of the report. The other officer who had appeared in the committee for the first time, did not know head or tail of the cases and had signed the documents blindly. The Naval Officer’s office, subsequently asked the PTF to give them a copy since they had only heard of this in the newspapers !

The Disciplinary Committee report is so biased and so clearly malafide that it is comical. For instance, the biggest charge against the PTF Secretary is ticket fraud. All he had done was that en route to the ITF AGM, he had asked the PTF Treasurer for the lowest possible fare to London, saying that he wanted to add his own money and go to the USA. He received Rs:33000 (since the direct ticket to London was about Rs:40,000, this entailed a savings to the PTF of Rs:7000) from PTF and added his own Rs 21000 to it for an additional sector to the USA. As it turned out, he did not even go to the USA, coming straight back after the meeting, losing the Rs:21000.. Since the treasurer was a member of Brig. Khokhar’s group, he had tried in vain to make this an issue. None of this or any other issue was discussed in the meeting, making it a mockery of justice.

The PTF had appointed defence officers to the disciplinary committee, knowing that they have strict and regimented disciplinary procedures, something that they take pride in and which is a cornerstone of their very existence. Little did the PTF know that this trust would be so brutally flouted and all rules and regulations would be thrown out the window at the altar of personal ambition, greed and vengeance. No surprise that the game has never delivered the results, which our talented youngsters do have. Too much power play and too little tennis.