Sohail abbas son

Pakistani field hockey player

Sohail Abbas, (born 9 June ) is a former professional field hockey player from Pakistan who played as a Full-back. Regarded as one of the greatest players of all time he is the all-time second highest goal scorer in international field hockey and highest goal scorer in modern field hockey (artificial turf) with international goals.^[1] A drag-flick specialist noted for his lethal flicks with great accuracy and speed in front of goal from penalty corners he is widely regarded as the 'King of the drag flick'.^[2][3]

Abbas started his professional career in Pakistan and played professional hockey in Malaysia, Netherlands, Germany and India in his career most notably for Dutch side HC Rotterdam.

After representing Pakistan at junior levels Abbas made his international debut in the Test series against India in February He scored his first senior international goal in the second match of the series in a 2–1 win. Abbas has caps for Pakistan and in which he scored goals including 21 hat-tricks an international record. He has represented his country at , , and FIH Hockey World Cups and the , and Summer Olympics being the top scorer for Pakistan at both the World Cups and Olympics.

Early life

Born at Karachi's Holy Family Hospital, Soldier Bazaar on 9 June ,^[4] Sohail is a former pupil of Karachi's Habib Public School, the school of many other hockey stars. In fact, it has been rightly remarked that hockey is taught as a subject in this school.

He came from a sporting family; his father, Syed Iftikhar Hussain, was a former first-class cricketer.

He represented Karachi as well as Pak Crescent Club, famous for producing Zaheer Abbas. Abbas is eldest of three brothers. Raheel Abbas, his younger brother, is also former professional first-class cricketer. Sohail has often said that his inspiration came from his uncle, Safdar Abbas, a left-winger who represented Pakistan from to where he scored against Argentina during the World Cup as a year-old boy.

Abbas is keen to emphasize the part played by Safdar, who, Abbas says, inspired him as a youngster.^[5]

Abbas started playing hockey for his school and later for his college. In the beginning he played as a forward but due to his physical built and unsatisfactory performance his youth coach moved him in the defense. Dejected by this Abbas started practicing his drag-flick abilities to keep the scoring aspect of his game.

Before him Pakistan played a brand of hockey that was known for its speedy forwards who created goal scoring chances from their technique not penalty-corner specialists like the European style. He started practicing solely on drag-flicks from watching old video tapes of former players and would spend hours on drag-flicks even after match practice.^[6]

Club career

Domestic

HBL

Abbas started his professional senior career in his native Pakistan playing for his departmental team Habib Bank of his hometown Karachi in the Pakistan National Hockey Championship.

Abbas helped his domestic team to reach the final of the National Championship in ^{[citation needed]}

SSGC and WAPDA

After a brief stunt with SSGC Abbas continued playing in the Pakistan domestic season but this time for WAPDA.

Sohail abbas interesting facts: He organized friendly matches between Dutch and international sides composed of international players from Australia, Germany, and India who were also playing professional hockey in Netherlands to raise funds that were to be directly transferred to the affected region through international relief organizations. Sohail Abbas is the topmost goal scorer in international hockey with international goals. Manchester , England. Ipoh , Malaysia.

In the season and , he won the National Hockey Championship back to back with WAPDA as captain. He returned for his departmental team in Pakistan WAPDA from Netherlands in He was top scorer in the National Hockey Championship with 16 goals and in won the Hockey Asian Champions Club Cup. He continued playing for them in the domestic season until at the age of ^[7]

Abroad

Amsterdam HBC

Abbas's extraordinary talent and goal scoring prowess mean that he is a target of hockey clubs all over the world.

He joined Dutch club Amsterdam HBC in playing the season for them where he reached the semifinals, due to his commitments with the Pakistan team, Abbas only played for nine weeks and that too in two spells. He was provided with free lodging and boarding, offered a car and paid as much as dollars per match.^{[citation needed]}

Malaysia and Germany

In December he joined the Kuala Lumpur based side BS Nasional HC in Malaysia with whom he won the TNB Cup, the domestic cup competition and in April he played a season in the top division of Germany in the liga for Harvestehuder THC of Hamburg.

^{[citation needed]}

Hyderabad Sultans

In he played in the inaugural season of Indian Premier Hockey League for Hyderabad Sultans. He was the star attraction of the tournament and his team won the title.^[8]

Rotterdam HC

In May he made his second stint in the Netherlands after HC Rotterdam signed him for the promotion-relegation play-offs.

Sohail Abbas - Net Worth 2025, Age, Height, Bio, Birthday ... Sohail Abbas Hockey, Karachi. Sri Lanka. Pakistan squad — Summer Olympics — 5th place. Raheel Abbas, the younger brother has a job as an IT expert as well as an experienced Professional or First Class cricketer.

He scored in his debut for the club as his team won the promotion to the First Division for the following season. Abbas finished as top scorer for his club with 20 goals in the –06 season but his team failed to reach the finals. He again finished as top scorer for Rotterdam with 22 goals in –07 season helping his team finish third and securing qualification for the inaugural season of the Euro Hockey League.

In –08 season his team finished third both in the Hoofdklasse and in the Euro Hockey League where he was joint top scorer with 7 goals.

According to Abbas playing in Netherlands with Rotterdam introduced him to different style of play and technique which added to a lot to his game. During the as Pakistan was hit with a devastating earthquake Abbas started a fund raising mission with the approval of his club and Rotterdam city council for the victims of the tragedy.

He organized friendly matches between Dutch and international sides composed of international players from Australia, Germany, and India who were also playing professional hockey in Netherlands to raise funds that were to be directly transferred to the affected region through international relief organizations.^[9]

Hong Kong

In Abbas signed for Punjab Sports Club to play in the semi-professional Hong Kong premier league for a season.^[10]

International career

Youth teams

As a young hockey player, his potential was not realized for some time.

He had difficulty making an impact on the professional hockey leagues between and Like many Pakistani hockey players, he is a product of the Pakistan Junior Squad. An impressive performance in the 18th Junior National Hockey U18 Championship at Quetta gained him a place in Pakistan Junior squad which drew their home series 2–2 against Germany Juniors.

Sohail abbas hockey Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description is different from Wikidata Use dmy dates from May All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from August Articles with unsourced statements from February Articles using sports links with data from Wikidata Pages using national squad without team link and with an atypical sport. Retrieved 4 January Andrews Nakahara. In fact, it was also the highest overall tally for this tournament till this year's Champions trophy.

He was not selected for the tour of Netherlands, Germany and Poland, playing next for Pakistan in the third Junior Asia Cup at Singapore in He staged a return to the Pakistan Junior side in , a side which beat Germany Junior in four consecutive test matches.

Four months later, he was dropped from the Pakistan Junior squad.

Pakistan Junior team manager Samiullah Khan and coach Ayaz Mahmood were not convinced to include him for the World Cup staged in Milton Keynes – an underwhelming squad that failed to making it to the Junior World Cup semi-finals for the first time in the cup's year history. Finally, he made his debut the following year on the national team and has since become arguably modern hockey's most prolific goalscorer of all time.

National debut

When he made his international debut during the 20th Pakistan-India series , his role was only to come from the bench for penalty corner drills. His debut was at Peshawar's Lala S.M. Ayub Hockey Stadium on Saturday, 28 February Pakistan manager effected a substitution midway through the tie, but failed to make an impact.

He failed to score in three penalty corners as Pakistan won 4–1. The following day, on 1 March , in the second test at Rawalpindi's Army Hockey Stadium, Abbas announced his arrival on the international scene in dramatic fashion, scoring a drag flick from a penalty corner which proved to be the match-winner in Pakistan's 2–1 victory.

When the rule was changed after the World Cup, he was not considered for the Commonwealth Games by coach Shahnaz Sheikh.

But he staged a comeback to win silver in Hockey Champions Trophy in Lahore and bronze at the Bangkok Asian Games. Abbas struck 20 goals in

Azlan Shah triumph and record year

In Abbas was in terrific form. He started off the year being the top scorer in both the India-Pakistan test series with 10 goals and Sultan Azlan Shah Cup with 12 goals helping Pakistan win the title for the first time.^[11] He finished top scorer of the Hockey Asia Cup with 16 goals equaling the record of Hassan Sardar of most goals in an edition of the tournament in ^[12] During the match against Sri Lanka he scored 7 goals in the 15–0 victory making him only the sixth player to have scored a double-hattrick for Pakistan in a match.

But Pakistan finished second after losing the final to South Korea. Abbas finished the year with 60 goals breaking the record of modern hockey's most international goals in a calendar year by Paul Litjens of Netherlands,

Olympics

Pakistan qualified for Sydney Olympics by taking part in Olympic Qualifiers in March in Osaka.

Pakistan finished second on the Japanese soil, with Sohail scoring 13 goals to finish as leading marksman. Abbas was also leading scorer at the Olympic Games, Sydney, with 11 goals. Mixing his impressive hitting abilities with drag-flicks, Abbas has proved himself to be the world's most consistent drag-flick converter, his success rate over 65% mark.

Pakistan lost the bronze medal match to hosts Australia by finishing fourth. This as of now was the last time Pakistan played for a medal at the Olympics in hockey. His total goals in were

Abbas scored a total of 37 goals in the Pakistan started off the year playing in an invitational tournament in Dhaka, Bangladesh where they finished second after losing the final to India on penalty strokes.

During the tour of Europe he scored a hat-trick against South Korea in Hamburg, Germany.

Sohail abbas debut

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Later he was top-scorer of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup with 10 goals but Pakistan finished fourth. In the last assignment of the year Pakistan played in the Champions Trophy in Rotterdam where he scored another hat-trick against Germany but Pakistan again finished at fourth place

World Cup

Sohail attracted worldwide attention in when he emerged as the joint highest scorer along with Argentina's Jorge Lombi in the 10th World Cup at Kuala Lumpur.

And all 10 goals that Abbas scored at the Bukit Jalil Stadium in the Malaysian capital were off PCs. He managed 44 goals in and added yet another feather to his cap in that year. Hasan Sardar was Pakistan's top scorer with goals before Abbas unveiled his goal-scoring prowess. During the Six-Nation Invitational tournament at Kuala Lumpur, a month before World Cup , Sohail scored his st international goal, becoming Pakistan's all-time highest scorer in international hockey.

He struck nine goals as Pakistan managed bronze medals in 17th Commonwealth Games hockey tournament at Manchester. He struck hat-trick when Pakistan routed South Africa 10–2 in bronze-decider on 4 August Later, in the 24th CT in Cologne, Germany, Sohail played a major role and Pakistan finished third ahead of India.

Suspension and controversy

Abbas managed 28 goals in and for the sixth time running, he finished as annual leading scorer for Pakistan. He struck five goals as Pakistan met success in Ipoh's 12th Azlan Shah Cup in March but later on Pakistan went to Australia without him, Muhammad Nadeem and Waseem Ahmad as the trio had defied the PHF by skipping the national training camp to play professional league in Germany.

Sohail and Waseem represented German club Harvestehuder THC of Hamburg while Nadeem played for Gladbacher HTC. It was Abbas's third spell as pro hockey player after Dutch league and Malaysian League (he represented Bank Simpanan Nasional BSN along with Kashif Jawwad). Nadeem did return in time for the trials for the Australia-bound squad, but he was not considered for selection and Pakistan suffered embarrassment, finishing last in both twin 4-Nation tournaments at Perth and Sydney.^[13]

Nadeem, later on, was reprimanded for his act while Abbas and Waseem were not allowed to appear in Pakistan-China series in July.

They faced an inquiry committee on 14 July during which they regretted the mistake. Both were allowed to join the camp and seven days later were included in the team for the 25th CT. But their inclusion only came after hefty fines of Rs. , each on the players. PHF inquiry committee had also recommended a one-year ban on the duo.

But PHF President Gen. Muhammad Aziz Khan brought an amicable end to the controversy when he said that the under-fire players will compete in the CT in better national interest.

Olympics and world record

Sohail started in whirlwind fashion and won the top scorer award in 13th Azlan Shah Cup at Bukit Jalil Complex.

He struck ten goals with the help of two hat tricks against India and Germany. He managed one double hat trick and 21 hat tricks in international modern hockey so far: a record unmatched in international field hockey. Sohail recorded 59 goals in and was well poised to break his own world record of most goals in calendar year (60 in ) before retirement.

Sohail was the key figure when Pakistan won a place at the Summer Olympics by finishing third at the Olympic Qualifiers in Madrid on 13 March Three times Olympic Champion Pakistan also qualified Sohail was also leading marksman at Madrid with nine goals. Four of these nine goals were against India in league encounter when he converted four out of four penalty corners.

At Athens, he became the record Pakistani goalscorer in a single Olympiad, beating the goal record of centre-forward Hassan Sardar, created at the Los Angeles Olympiad twenty years beforehand. Only Sohail, Sardar and Abdul Rashid Jr. have topped the goal scoring-chart in Olympics hockey.

Abbas scored his th international goal during the Champions Trophy in Amritsar, India to equal the year-old record of Dutch penalty corner specialist Paul Litjens on 4 October and then on 8 October he broke the Dutchman's record.^[14][15] He retired in December , just after the Champions Trophy in Lahore along with another Pakistani great Waseem Ahmad, when he was only 27 years of age but on 4 July , he decided to return to the international hockey.^[16] Since the summer of he and Waseem have both played for Dutch club Rotterdam.

He struck his 33rd goal to break Mark Hager's 9-year-old record.

Sohail abbas biography According to Abbas playing in Netherlands with Rotterdam introduced him to different style of play and technique which added to a lot to his game. He scored the most goals from penalty corners, so definitely he is the best in the world,". He was the star attraction of the tournament and his team won the title. Share this profile:.

His 33rd goal emerged from penalty-mark when he converted 66th-minute penalty-stroke against India in Pakistan's 2–1 win on fourth day of 26th Champions Trophy. The Australian striker had registered 32 goals from to He took 11 editions for his 32 goals while Sohail did the needful in his 6th CT and added another on 12 December tie to make his final Champions' Trophy total Abbas immediately after the end of announced his retirement from international hockey saying he wants to retire while at his best form while keeping to option to come back if the national team needs him for major tournaments.^[17]

Coming out of retirement and World Cup

After retiring form the national team he missed all of the campaigns even the World Cup qualification in China but he was recalled for the tour of Europe and the Champions Trophy before the World Cup.

Pakistan finished a disappointing sixth at the World Cup in Germany.

Comeback year and World Cup

After remaining out of national setup for two years and missing the Beijing Olympics Abbas was called back into the national squad for the Hockey Asia Cup where Pakistan lost the final to South Korea. Abbas helped secure qualification for the World Cup by winning the qualifiers in Lille, France, and later finished silver in the Hockey Champions Challenge I in Argentina.

Despite good performances in the test series with Netherlands in previous months Pakistan finished their worst 12th at the World Cup in New Delhi managing to win just a match. Abbas first Major Gold Medal was in Asian Games held in China. Abbas's finest moment for Pakistan continued to be the Asian Games as he was part of the team which beat South Korea 4–3 on penalty strokes.

Abbas however missed his penalty. Malaysia defeated India 4–3 and played Pakistan in the final. On 25 November the Malaysia v Pakistan final started during the 28th minute of the match Abbas scored a penalty corner to give Pakistan a 1–0 lead. Rehan Butt scored a goal 4 minutes after half time to extend the lead to 2–0.

Videos

3:23YouTubeSohail Abbas Biography - Sohail Abbas Inspirational Story

Malaysia failed to score and the whistle blew with Pakistan winning the Asian Games Hockey Tournament. This became Pakistan's first victory at the Asian Games since and their first victory in a major international tournament since the Champions Trophy. The year drought ended and Pakistan and Sohail Abbas put a poor World Cup and Commonwealth Games behind them to give their country their first major trophy in 16 years.^[18]

Captaincy and Olympics

Abbas remained part of the team setup with the Olympics in mind.

In he scored 19 goals for Pakistan. After serving Pakistan for almost 14 years, Abbas was awarded the captaincy of the national hockey side for the first time in the Azlan Shah Cup and London Olympics ^[19] Abbas's side ended 7th (last) in the Azlan Shah tournament.^{[citation needed]} Similarly, they ended the Olympics at the 7th position despite starting off with a draw against Spain.

Sohail was dropped from the team after the Olympics.^[20] Later he announced his retirement from the national side.

Post-retirement

Despite multiple coaching offers from PHF Sohail declined taking part in any program working under the Pakistan Hockey management and kept a low profile. In October he took his first coaching role as an assistant coach for penalty corners for the Malaysia national team.^[21][22]

Player profile

Sohail can easily be regarded as the best short corner expert in world hockey.

Argentina's Jorge Lombi and Netherlands's Taeke Taekema are second in line. He is a natural short corner expert with a very strong wrist, a powerful drag flick and a perfected dummy "body dodge" action. He was Pakistani candidate for the FIH Player of the Year award in , , , and

Time spent in Netherlands him tone his skills and he pays warm tribute to the club boss Jons Hanset, who helped make his stay enjoyable.

Twelve goals in 5 matches and helped his team qualify for the play-offs was no mean feat and he has no hesitation in stating that Netherlands remains his favorite country to visit.

Sohail abbas video He has also appeared in the former Hockey Champions Trophy organized by FIH eight times from to being the top scorer for Pakistan in the competition with 41 goals. Frank Zweerts. Utrecht , Netherlands. National debut [ edit ].

Close to his mother, he describes her as "my greatest supporter. I credit her with all I have achieved."

Many of Sohail's contemporaries were in awe of his performances. Former India goal keeper, Jude Menezes recalls that Abbas was so confident of his ability that he could tell his opposing number which section of the goal he would target, and still make the shot.^[23]

Records

Sohail Abbas holds the following records in field hockey:

WORLD RECORDS:

• Highest goals scorer in modern field hockey with goals.
• Highest number of goals in modern field hockey in a calendar year: 60 goals in
• Fastest to score goals in modern international hockey: two years six months and 18 days.
• Fastest to score goals in modern international hockey: five years five months and 16 days.
• Highest number of goals in a single edition of Asia Cup
• He has scored a record 21 modern field hockey international hat tricks including one double hat trick.

Career statistics

Club

International

Further information: List of international goals scored by Sohail Abbas

Pakistan
Year	Caps	Goals
	31	20
	36	60
	21	26
	29	37
	36	44
	21	30
	50	59
	16	14
	15	17
	14	10
	26	21
	16	10
Total

See also

References

External links