The checks are finally clearing. It’s about time.

Pakistan hockey has spent the last decade functioning like a legacy software system that everyone forgot to patch. It’s buggy, prone to crashing, and the hardware is rusted through. But after a disastrous showing in Australia—the kind of sporting collapse that makes you want to change the channel and never look back—the government has decided to hit the refresh button. Or at least, they’ve decided to throw some cricket money at the problem and hope the optics improve.

Mohsin Naqvi, a man currently juggling the interior ministry and the chairmanship of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), has stepped into the rink. He’s promised support. He’s promised a "revival." And in a move that signals just how dire things have become, the PCB is the one cutting the checks.

It’s a bizarre corporate synergy. Imagine Apple bailing out a failing typewriter factory because of "national heritage," and you’re halfway to understanding the vibe. The PCB, flush with PSL cash and broadcast rights, is now the sugar daddy for a sport that used to be the country’s primary export. The irony is thick enough to choke on.

The Australia tour was, by any objective metric, a fiasco. We aren't just talking about a few losses. We’re talking about a systematic dismantling of a team that looked like it had forgotten which end of the stick to hold. They were slow. They were disorganized. They looked like they hadn't had a decent meal or a tactical briefing in months. The scorelines weren't just lopsided; they were an indictment of a federation that has spent more time on infighting than on scouting.

Naqvi’s rhetoric is predictably high-octane. "Pakistan’s honour comes first," he told the press, standing next to players who looked like they were just happy the lights were still on. It’s a great line for a soundbite. It plays well on talk shows. But honour doesn't pay for world-class coaching, and it certainly doesn't fix the fact that the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) has been a black hole for funding for years.

The PCB’s intervention is a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. They’ve reportedly stepped in with monetary help to cover the immediate fallout—dues, daily allowances, the basic costs of existing as a professional athlete. It’s a temporary fix for a permanent crisis. The friction here isn't just about the money; it’s about the precedent. By letting the cricket board subsidize hockey, the government is essentially admitting that the PHF is a ghost ship. It’s a vote of no confidence wrapped in a patriotic press release.

Let’s look at the price of this "honour." To actually compete with the likes of Australia or the Netherlands, you don't just need a one-time infusion of cash from the cricket coffers. You need a complete structural overhaul. You need modern turf, international exposure, and a domestic league that isn't a relic of the 1980s. Instead, we get a photo op and a promise that things will be different this time.

The players aren't the villains here. They’re the ones sweating out 5-0 drubbings while the suits in Lahore and Islamabad argue over who gets to sit in the VIP box. For a kid playing hockey in Gojra, the "PCB stepping in" isn't a sign of growth. It’s a sign that the sport they love is officially a charity case.

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with being a fan of Pakistani sports. You’re constantly told that the "renaissance" is just around the corner, only to find out the corner is a dead end. Naqvi is a man who knows how to move fast, but hockey is a game of endurance, not just optics. You can't tweet your way to an Olympic podium.

The monetary help is a start, sure. It keeps the lights on for another month. It stops the players from having to crowdfund their own jerseys. But the trade-off is clear: Hockey is no longer an independent pillar of Pakistani culture. It’s a satellite of the cricket machine, surviving on the scraps of Babar Azam’s jersey sales.

We’ve seen this movie before. A crisis hits, a powerful figure makes a grand gesture, and the underlying rot is ignored in favor of a "national pride" narrative. Then, six months later, the checks stop arriving, the news cycle moves on to a political scandal, and the team is back to losing 7-0 in a half-empty stadium.

Is this the beginning of a genuine comeback, or is it just the PCB buying a bit of good PR to distract from their own mounting list of problems?

It’s a nice sentiment, the idea that honour comes first. But in the real world, the invoice usually comes due long before the pride kicks in. One has to wonder: how many more 5-0 thrashings can a country’s honour actually survive?