How Pakistan hockey went from world-beaters to Olympic absentees

Pakistan has won a record four hockey World Cups but is now missing from its second successive Olympic Games.

Shakeel Abbasi remembers the times he donned the Pakistan national hockey team jersey Once a prolific striker of the men’s side, Abbasi now feels he made a “big mistake” in taking hockey on as a career when, he says, many options were open to him as a promising athlete. “I made a big mistake by picking hockey over cricket. I was very good in both but I preferred our national sport [hockey]. Sometimes, I feel it was a big mistake,” Abbasi, a three-time Olympian, told Al Jazeera.