Sohail Abbas: The world record holder of Pakistan
Sohail Abbas is a penalty corner specialist and defender in the Pakistani hockey team.
In November 2010 with 313 goals, Sohail broke the ‘world’s highest number of goals’ record previously held by Dhyan Chand on 274 goals.
Sohail Abbas was born on 9 June, 1977 in Karachi. He attended Karachi’s Habib Public School, renowned for developing brilliant hockey stars for Pakistan. It is said that hockey is taught there as a subject.
Sohail’s family has a sports background. His father, Syed Iftikhar and younger brother have both played first-class cricket. Sohail was inspired as a youngster by his uncle Safdar Abbas, a left-wing attacker who scored a goal against Argentina at the young
age of 16 in the 1973 World Cup.
As a young player, he was unable to prove his abilities and faced difficulties in making an impression in the Hockey Leagues of 1995-1998. He was selected in 1995 to the Junior Squad on the basis of his impressive performance in the Under-18 championship
in Quetta. In 1997, he played for Pakistan Juniors and beat the Germany Juniors four test matches in a row. Later, he was dropped from the squad. He was excluded from the 1997 World Cup, but managed to make a debut in the National Team the following year.
He has been a consistent player achieving various goal records.
Sohail was in good form in 1999 after scoring a total of 20 goals in 1998. His performance was good as Pakistan won a silver medal in the 1999 Azlan Shah Cup for the first time. He was the top goal scorer in the 8th Pakistan India series, 9th
Azlan Shah Cup and 5th Asia Cup with the total count of 10 goals, 12 goals and 16 goals respectively. In 1999 he not only broke the world record of Litjens (58 goals) with the total of 60 goals but also the National record of Sardar (50 goals) in
the same year.
In his International debut, during the 7th Pak-India series, his only task were penalty corner drills. He became the top scorer in the 2000 Olympic Games in Athens. Sohail has proven himself as a steady drag flicker with a scoring rate of over
65%. On 13 March, 2004, Sohail Abbas was in the spot-light as he made it possible for the team to win a place in the Athens Olympic Hockey Tournament by securing 3rd place in the Madrid Olympic Qualifier. He broke the 20-year old record
of centre-forward Hassan Sardar, being the single Pakistani Olympiad record goal scorer in Athens.
During his six-year International career, he managed to hold three World records, namely the highest number of goals (60) in one calendar year, quickest to score both 100 and 200 goals title in International Hockey. Recently, in November 2010, he managed
to cross his 3rd century creating a record of the highest goals of 313.
He retired in 2004, but yet again made a comeback for the World Cup 2010. He failed to take part in the Commonwealth Games 2010, but proved his presence in the 2010 Asian Games final. It was his first major gold medal until now as well as the World record
of the highest goals in International hockey.
Tags: