After so many sporting disasters it must be heartening for Pakistan to be welcoming home teams of successful athletes, men and women, from the Asian Games. This is a reversal of fortunes, said The News in an editorial published Sunday. Excerpts: Our hockey team had finished last at the World Cup in March and sixth in the Commonwealth Games in October. Now we have our first hockey gold at the Asian Games level since 1990. The win gives an automatic free pass to the London Olympics in 2012. Our women cricketers won gold but the men disappointed. They were beaten by Afghanistan which is roughly the equivalent of the national side getting a thrashing from a village team playing with 10 men. All was not lost however. They beat Sri Lanka for the bronze and are not coming home empty-handed. We beat the Malaysians to lift gold in squash and all in all Team Pakistan has done much to redeem both our image and our fortunes at the Asian Games. Once the euphoria is over, we need to pause for reflection. We need to pause because we have to understand the recipe for this success. What were the ingredients that produced an outstanding team of women cricketers who excelled themselves against the odds? They are underfunded and were previously little recognized. What changed in the hockey team to take them from zeros to heroes in nine months? How come our squash players could pull it off this year? Sporting success does not happen by accident. It is the product of teamwork and team spirit where it is a team game, good coaching in both team and individual sports, an individual sense of determination which comes from family, friends and supporters and a sense of pride in representing the nation. We need to understand the recipe for success because this is a dish we want to cook time after time after time, not occasionally, a flash in the pan. That recipe needs to be institutionalized within the corpus of sport in the broadest sense so that our young men and women who compete for us internationally gain the respect that we and they deserve. The Asian Games have proved we can do it. Now we have to prove we can do it again. __
