Mubashir Nadeem
There is a quiet but significant development unfolding in Pakistan’s sports administration, and it deserves more attention than it has received. After years of dysfunction, legal battles, funding disputes, and the looming threat of international suspension hanging over multiple federations, better sense appears to have finally prevailed. A new national sports policy is being rolled out, and its architects seem to have learned, at considerable cost, from the failures of the past.
The most immediate signal of a changed approach is the process itself. National sports federations have been invited to provide feedback on the draft before it is formally implemented. This is not merely procedural courtesy. It represents a meaningful departure from the top-down, often adversarial relationship that has defined dealings between the Pakistan Sports Board and the country’s sporting bodies for two decades. Consultation before implementation is how functional governance works, and the sports sector in Pakistan has been starved of it for far too long.
The draft policy grants federations the status of autonomous bodies, a concession that should reduce considerably the friction that has historically made every interaction between the PSB and the federations a potential flashpoint. Autonomy, however, comes with accountability. Federations will be required to comply with governance standards set by the PSB and adhere to performance-based criteria established by their respective international governing bodies. This dual accountability framework is sensible. It protects the independence that federations need to function effectively while ensuring that public resources are tied to measurable outcomes rather than political relationships.
A national sports council is also to be established, alongside a financial framework designed to ensure consistent funding for federations to conduct their activities. This addresses what has been, perhaps, the most damaging practical failure of the previous policy: chronic underfunding. Since the 2005 national sports policy was implemented, federations that fell out of alignment with the PSB faced financial strangulation. The state, rather than supporting sport, was using money as a weapon in institutional disputes. Athletes paid the price. Development programmes stalled. Talent went unsupported. The country’s competitive standing in multiple disciplines suffered as a consequence of bureaucratic warfare that had nothing to do with sport itself.
The 2005 policy’s single most destructive clause was its insistence on a two-term leadership limit for federation heads. This directly contradicted the rules of international governing bodies, which generally permit a minimum of three terms. The collision was inevitable. Federations whose leadership had served beyond two terms found themselves caught between domestic law and international rules, with no clean resolution available. Legal disputes multiplied. Courts became involved. Government interference followed. The threat of global suspension, in several cases, became a reality. Pakistan’s athletes were effectively being punished for a policy error made by administrators who either did not understand international sports governance or did not care to.
The new draft has avoided this trap, and that alone represents meaningful progress. Those who designed it appear to understand that Pakistan’s sports federations do not operate in a domestic vacuum. They are members of global bodies with their own constitutions, timelines, and requirements. Any national policy that ignores this reality will, sooner or later, generate the same chaos the 2005 policy produced. Alignment between domestic governance and international standards is not a bureaucratic luxury. It is a practical necessity.
There is a broader context worth acknowledging. Sport has increasingly become an instrument of diplomacy and a vehicle for projecting soft power on the international stage. Nations invest in their athletes not merely for medals but for the global visibility, the national pride, and the political goodwill that sporting success generates. Pakistan has produced athletes of extraordinary talent across cricket, hockey, squash, wrestling, and other disciplines. The country’s sporting heritage is genuinely distinguished. But that heritage has been poorly served by governance failures, and the gap between Pakistan’s sporting potential and its actual competitive performance in many disciplines reflects years of mismanagement rather than any shortage of talent.
The new policy’s emphasis on inclusivity and on uniting national federations under a shared framework is therefore not merely administrative tidiness. It is a statement of intent about what Pakistani sport can become when its institutions are properly aligned and its athletes are properly supported. The long-running disputes between the PSB and the federations have not simply been unpleasant. They have been developmentally catastrophic, consuming energy, money, and years that should have been invested in identifying young talent, developing coaches, building infrastructure, and competing at the highest international levels.
The test of this policy, as with all policy, lies in implementation. Consultation processes can be genuine or performative. Autonomy can be granted on paper while being eroded in practice. Funding frameworks can be announced and then quietly underfunded. Performance accountability can become politicised. All of these failure modes are familiar from Pakistan’s governance history, and the sports sector has experienced most of them at one time or another.
What is encouraging, however, is that the foundation being laid appears sounder than anything constructed in the past two decades. If the government holds to the spirit of what it has drafted, grants federations genuine operational independence, funds them consistently, and resists the temptation to intervene when political relationships become uncomfortable, Pakistani sport has a real opportunity to reverse a long decline. The athletes deserve nothing less.
Republic Policy Think Tank’s governance reform books are available at Vanguard Books, Readings, Sang-e-Meel, and bookstores across Pakistan.
