WHY ASIAN HOCKEY FELL Hockey is the third most popular international game after football and basketball. For long the Indians and Pakistanis were the unchallenged leaders, but artificial fields have introduced a new dimension to the game and they are no longer on top. Costs for laying artificial surfaces are high. While Britain has 50 India has only two and Pakistan six. It is another case, of the gap growing between the haves and the have-nots. Tony Cozier the writer is a noted West Indian sports writer.

THE signboards around the Willesden sports complex in north London pictured a little green man alighting from a spaceship carrying a hockey stick and proclaiming hockey to be “the game of the future”.

If the imagery was a little farfetched, the sixth World Cup tournament, held for the first time in the country which gave it to the world, proved that the sport was moving into a new age.

It was the first World Cup ever to be staged on an artificial playing surface, the first to receive wide international television and media coverage and one in which the do finance of the two giants of hoc key, India and Pakistan, was laid to rest.

“World hockey has been transformed, said Patrick Rowley, editor of World Hockey magazine, after the favorites, Australia, had beaten England 21 in the final and Pakistan had edged India in the playoff match to determine last place among the 12 nations.

He pointed out: “Artificial surfaces have changed its very nature. Strength and speed are now far more important but, as if that were not enough, the Europeans and the Antipodeans have raised their skills to a new level”.

The influence of the new fields basically a carpet of plastic grass has been marked.

Hockey was previously played on grass pitches where the ball moved far more slowly and’ off which the bounce could be uneven. In wet weather, play was severely affected. In contrast, the variety of artificial surfaces now on offer, and used other sports such as football, baseball and’ American football, provide a fast, true run for the ball. What is more, they remain consistent even in wet weather.

The Indians and, after partition in 1947, the Pakistanis ruled the roost in world hockey from the time India won the gold medal at the Olympics in 1928. The game, first played in England in 1861, was introduced to India by the Governor of Bengal at the turn of the century. With their quick eyes, supple wrists and natural speed, the Indians quickly mastered it. No one could touch them for decades,

But the sport has spread so that it is now the third most popular international team game after football and baseball. New techniques were employed by European coaches to counter the skill and speed of the Indians and Pakistanis.

More recently, the plastic fields have added a new dimension to play and the Indians and Pakistanis have been found wanting. While every leading club in Holland has an artificial surface and over 50 are dotted around Britain, there are only two to service all of India and only a half dozen in Pakistan.

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has stipulated that all major international! tournaments must now be staged on artificial surfaces, making grass redundant.

 

Horst We in, one of hockey’s most celebrated ‘coaches, said: “It’s useless having your national players competing on grass in club matches and then hoping to be ready to play on a plastic pitch at international level. It would be like a swimmer training in the ocean for an event in an indoor pool.”

Players confirm that the difference is enormous. The ball travels so fast on the artificial surface that speed and fitness are now decisive. At the end of a match, played over two halves of 35 minutes each, calf and thigh muscles tend to “tie up” and physiotherapists were important members of each squad at the World Cup.

As usual, such developments tend to widen, the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Stafford Shann, president of the Jamaica Hockey Association who watched the World Cup, observed: “Costs for laying artificial surfaces vary between Pound 120,000 and Pound 350,000. Hockey is popular in the Caribbean but we’re hard-pressed to find that kind of money. The response of any government would be that it could build a lot of houses.”

Yet Shann is convinced that the smaller countries have the talent to compete, given the chance. He said, “Ten years ago, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago were beating Canada at international level. But their government had the financial resources to back them, give them proper facilities, send them on tours. Ours didn’t. That’s why Canada was among the 12 nations at the World Cup and the only Jamaican was myself in an official capacity”.

Andy Agbi, chairman of the Anambra State Hockey Association in Nigeria, was upset that there was no place set aside for an African representative in the “World Cup.

He pointed out: “Every other continent was represented. Our top nation, Zambia, had to playoff against the Europeans and did not make it. Hockey should follow football’s example is represented _ in the World Cup finals. We need that sort of encouragement”.

The bald truth is that the balance of power has now been transferred from two Third World representatives, India and Pakistan, very much to the First World.

Australia, England, West Germany and the Soviet Union were the semifinalists in the Willesden World Cup and the fastest emerging nations are those with the financial backing for their teams such as Canada and South Korea which did not qualify for the World Cup finals but which beat both India and Pakistan in taking the Asian Games gold medal.

Most observers believe the decline of Pakistan and India is only temporary and, with the 1990 World Cup scheduled for Lahore, the Pakistanis have been promised new facilities. Majid Khan, the former cricket captain who covered the World Cup for Pakistani television, believes the decline is due more to poor administration than any decline in standards at home.

The success of the World Cup itself and the impressive showing of the England team guarantees a resurgence of the sport in the country which gave it to the world. But, like every other country, it.

Article extracted from this publication >>  January 23, 1987