Karachi: Pakistan is looking beyond its senior hockey players who underperformed in last month’s Beijing Games where the three-time Olympic champion finished eighth, its worst showing in the Games history.

The national hockey bosses gave an indication that they are planning to rebuild the team for the 2010 World Cup in New Delhi by overlooking several senior players for a four-nation hockey tournament in Germany.

The national selectors ignored a number of experienced players including defender Zeeshan Ashraf, who captained Pakistan in Beijing, and forward Rehan Butt, midfielders Mohammad Saqlain, Adnan Maqsood and goalie Salman Akbar while naming a 37-man provisional squad for next month’s Hamburg Masters.

It seems like the start of a major rebuilding phase, two years before the World Cup. “We are certainly planning a rebuilding phase in a bid to get ready for the next World Cup and Olympic Games,” said PHF secretary Asif Bajwa.

“But that doesn’t mean that some of the senior players who will not be playing in the Hamburg Masters have been dropped. We have actually rested them after taking them in confidence,” added Bajwa, a former Pakistan international. Pakistan flopped miserably in Beijing where they lost to lower-ranked teams like Great Britain and New Zealand. Senior players, who failed to give their best, were blamed for the defeats. IANS