Haider Rasool has become the country’s first ever international hockey umpire to supervise a century of international hockey matches.
Haider gained this unique distinction during the ‘Hockey World League’ in Johannesburg, South Africa on Thursday.
Before the start of Hockey World League match between Germany and South Africa, Haider received the golden whistle from the FIH. The golden whistle is awarded to umpires on completing 100 senior international matches.
Haider, a former national goalkeeper, also attended quite a few national camps, including one in the World Cup 1998. He started to blow the whistle in domestic circuit in 2002 and next year attended an umpiring seminar conducted by the Asian Hockey Federation in Ipoh, Malaysia.
He umpired his first tournament outside Pakistan; 2nd edition of the Indian Premier League, in 2004. He was declared an international umpire in 2005 by the FIH.
He umpired his first international match during ‘Junior International Tournament’ – 6-Nation in Malaysia – in 2005, and his first senior international tournament – MIA International Challenge, Singapore – in August 2005.
For Haider, it has been a story of the rise and rise since then. After umpiring quite a few regional qualifiers and invitational tournaments, where he got good reports by the tournaments’ Umpire Managers, Haider was promoted to the promising umpires list of the FIH in Feb, 2008.
This enabled him to stand in continental tournaments like the Pan Am Championships (2008) and Asian Games (2010) as well as other high profile events such as the Junior World Cup (2009) and the Commonwealth Games (2010).
Again, his consistently high-quality performances got him excellent evaluations, and Haider Rasool became a ‘grade-1’ international umpire in Dec 2010. This enabled him to stand in the Champions Trophy editions.
Next step up was the ‘World Development Panel’ in 2013, a notch below the World Panel (the top most tier). He was among the reserves for the Olympics in 2012 and 2016.
Haider is very hopeful to blow the whistle in the 2018 World Cup and also to be promoted to the World Panel-soon. “I am very delighted to stand in my 100th international match and I am thankful to Allah Almighty for giving me this honour”, Haider told APP.
He attributes his success as an international hockey umpire to his country. “I am thankful to Pakistan Hockey Federation for extending help and support to me to achieve a milestone in my hockey career to have supervised one hundred international matches”, he said.