Article courtesy Jimmy Bhogal's Indian Hockey Blog

rom the year 2012, all FIH member countries who want to participate in the Olympics or World Cup will play in a 'World League' in order to qualify for these events. The objective of the World League is give opportunities to even the minnows to qualify for the World Cup or Olympics.

The proposed World League will have four rounds - Rounds 1 and 2 will be played in the year 2012, and Rounds 3 and 4 will be played in 2013. The top 8 teams in the world have been given byes directly to Round 3, while teams ranked 9-16 have been given byes to Round 2.

The first thing that struck my mind after looking at the World League format is the time period. 2 YEARS. Seriously? Who is going to wait for two years to watch teams qualify and play?

Football takes 2 years to filter down 200 countries to the 32 that qualify for the World Cup. However, this is hockey, not football. Hockey does not have a worldwide audience, that would want to see, for example, the likes of Fiji and Papua New Guinea (last two teams in FIH rankings) compete for the Olympics.

Presently, qualification for the 12-team Hockey World Cup is based on the continental system. 4 from Europe, 1 each from Asia, Africa, Oceania and Pan America, 3 teams from 3 qualification tournaments, and 1 host country make up the 12-country field for the World Cup.

For the World League, the FIH is already giving byes to teams ranked 1-8 (to Round 3) and teams ranked 9-16 (to Round 2). But can teams ranked beyond the top 16 hope to qualify for the World Cup?

FIH says that it wants to give every country a chance to make it to highest possible level. For most of the teams, that will mean Round 2 of the World League. However, there is a vast difference in the playing standards of the top 10 countries, compared to the rest. There is no way minnows can defeat a top 5 team, even if the top 5 teams played with their developmental squads. So the minnows can forget about qualifying for the World Cup or the Olympics.

Also, the format of the World League does not help the cause of viewership among the television fans. It is a well known fact that hockey has lost its viewership to a great extent in India, as more popular sports like cricket and football have taken centre stage. A 2-year World League is not going to help the cause of improving television viewership of hockey.

Which broadcasting network is going to show the games live, especially those involving minnows in the 1st and 2nd rounds? Even the probability of showing games live in Round 3 is very small. The only stage where this event might be shown live is Round 4.

All the above points show very clearly that the FIH has not given much thought about the format of this World League. I think it is high time for FIH to think about what it has done to promote the cause of hockey, and start taking better steps for the promotion of hockey worldwide.

Article by Shashank Gupta, Photograph of Namdhari Team Owner, Thakur Uday Singh, courtesy Stick2Hockey.com

any things separate the Namdhari hockey team from the rest of the team in India's domestic hockey scenario. They are strictly vegetarians. Instead of eating meat, chicken, beef or eggs for strength; they start their day with milk, butter, almonds and soaked grams. They lead a humble life.

But they are soldiers to the hilt on the fields. When they are in any tournament, they make it eventful. Their mode of living and verve in fighting on the hockey fields present another kaleidoscopic view that makes up Indian hockey.

The Namdhari hockey team was born in the early 1980's. And when a flourishing Namdhari Seeds Company came into existence a decade later, it proved to be a boon for the Namdhari hockey team. Namdhari Seeds spends an estimated half a crore rupees each year on the team.

The Namdhari hockey team is the lone private top-level hockey team in India, with the rest of the top Indian teams being affiliated with public sector companies.

Its chief patron, Thakur Uday Singh, Managing Director of Namdhari Seeds, is a passionate hockey fan, having played hockey in his formative years. His obsession for hockey can be judged by the fact that he is often found on the turf sidelines, watching Namdhari matches.

This team is also well followed among the sect. At any time if one come across a few Sikhs dressed in white kurta, white pyjama and white turban, you can be sure that a Namdhari match is going on.

And if one recalls, dressed-in-white Namdharis thronged the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium, New Delhi, during the 2010 Hero Honda World Cup. All the Academy trainees were there for all 14 days of the World Cup. The young trainees fell in love with the fast and attacking game of the Europeans and Australians.

Unlike the other big names in hockey, Namdhari picks toddlers from their hockey nursery in the village of Srijeevan Nagara, Sirsa, Haryana. The ones showing potential are taken to Sri Bhaini Saheb, Ludhiana. A pocket money up to 10,000 per month, boarding, lodging, studies, and a synthetic turf (obtained from SAI, Bangalore at a throwaway price of 10 lakhs) is what awaits a player who happens to make it to this Ludhiana-based hostel.

Training from May to February, the Namdhari hockey team plays not only in domestic tournaments, but also in tournaments hosted in Canada, USA and UK. Non-resident-Indians living in these countries arrange for Namdhari's participation in tournaments like Surrey Cup (Canada), or Cal Cup (USA). No other domestic hockey team gets a similar opportunity. Namdharis expect their team to win around 3-4 tournaments in a year.

Baldev Singh, one of the coaches at the Namdhari Hockey Academy, played for India in the early 1970s. Deedar Singh, another coach, represented India in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. A few Namdhari players like Harpal Singh and Gurvinder Singh have reached the international level. Namdharis foresee current trainees, Gurmail Singh and Maalik Singh, as their next contributions to Indian hockey.

There have been operational challenges too for the Namdhari hockey team. Players dropping out for job or career opportunities remains an ongoing struggle for them.

The Namdhari players are known for their grit. In the last Bengaluru League, there were only 11 Namdhari players who could make it to Bengaluru for their first match. Still these 11 players put their hearts into the match against the Maratha Light Infantry, who looked extremely threatening on this day. Playing a 70-minute hockey game with reasonable quality and without substitutions is not an easy feat by any means. The 11-man Namdhari team managed to steal a convincing draw.

Jharkhand men's hockey team after their semi-final victory (Photo courtesy RanchiExpress.com)

he 34th National Games men's hockey competition was held from February 13 to February 25 at the Astroturf Hockey Stadium in Ranchi.

During the Games Opening Ceremony held on February 12, 62-year-old Olympic hockey gold medallist Sylvanus Dung Dung had the honour of lighting the Games torch.

The following 8 teams qualified for the men's hockey tournament - Chandigadh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Services and Tamil Nadu.

The men's hockey tournament was shown live on Doordarshan Sports. Punjab won the tournament, with the following match results:

Stage	Date	Punjab	Date	Jharkhand
Pool	Feb 15	beat Delhi 4-3	Feb 13	beat Tamil Nadu 3-1
	Feb 17	beat Maharashtra 3-2	Feb 17	beat Chandigadh 3-1
	Feb 21	lost to Orissa 2-4	Feb 21	beat Services 3-2
Semis	Feb 23	beat Services 3-2	Feb 23/24	beat Mahahrashtra 2-1 (2nd ET)
Final	Feb 25	beat Jharkhand 2-0

Maharashtra beat Services 3-1 to finish 3rd.

Chief minister Arjun Munda gave away the gold and silver medals to the men's hockey finalists.

Packed Stands for the National Games Women's Hockey Final - Haryana vs. Jharkhand

he 34th National Games women's hockey competition was held from February 13 to February 25 at the Astroturf Hockey Stadium in Ranchi.

The following 8 teams qualified for the women's hockey tournament - Assam, Delhi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh.

The captain of the Jharkhand women's team - Asunta Lakra - and the captain of the Jharkhand men's team - Bimal Lakra - are brother and sister. Another brother - Birendra Lakra, also played for the men's team.

The women's hockey tournament was shown live on Doordarshan Sports. Haryana won the tournament, with the following match results:

Stage	Date	Haryana	Date	Jharkhand
Pool	Feb 15	beat Uttar Pradesh 8-0	Feb 13	beat Assam 8-0
	Feb 18	beat Assam 17-0	Feb 17	beat Uttar Pradesh 9-0
	Feb 21	drew with Jharkhand 2-2	Feb 21	drew with Jharkhand 2-2
Semis	Feb 23	beat Orissa 3-1	Feb 23	beat Madhya Pradesh 3-1
Final	Feb 25	beat Jharkhand 3-1

Madhya Pradesh beat Orissa 4-0 to finish 3rd.

Photograph courtesy Balbir Singh of SportsWire

he 18th SAIL-Nehru Champion Colleges Hockey Tournament was held from February 19-26 at the Olympian Surjeet Hockey Stadium in Burlton Park, Jalandhar. The tournament was inaugurated by Dr. Daljeet Singh Cheema, Adviser to the Punjab Chief Minister.

12 champion college hockey teams from Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chennai, Delhi, Dhuri, Erode, Jalandhar (2), Nagpur, Rourkela, Sirsa and Sonipat took part in the tournament. Sri Guru Hari Singh College (Sirsa) won the tournament, with the following match results:

Stage	Date	Sri Guru Hari Singh College (Sirsa)	Date	Lyallpur Khalsa College (Jalandhar)
Pool	Feb 19	beat Jawaharlal Nehru PG College (Bhopal) 7-1	Feb 20	beat Jamia Malia Islamia (Delhi) 7-0
	Feb 21	beat Loyola College (Chennai) 6-0	Feb 22	beat Nandha Arts & Science College (Erode) 7-0
Quarters	Feb 23	beat Chotu Ram Arya College (Sonipat) 8-2	Feb 23	beat Desh Bhagat College (Dhuri) 4-2
Semis	Feb 25	beat Jawaharlal Nehru PG College (Bhopal) 5-0	Feb 25	beat Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College (Jalandhar) 7-1
Final	Feb 26	beat Lyallpur Khalsa College (Jalandhar) 3-0

The winning team got a cash award of 96,000, with the runner-up getting 64,000 and the third-placed team (Jawaharlal Nehru PG College of Bhopal) getting 32,000. The coaches of the top three teams won cash awards of 8,000, 5,000 and 3,000, respectively.

Jasjeet Singh Kular of Lyallpur Khalsa College (Jalandhar) was declared the Player of the Tournament, and awarded a Bajaj Motorcycle by Rakshak Sports. The Man of the Match of each game was given a track suit from Rakshak.

Prof. Beena Shah, Secretary General of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), gave away the prizes to the winners. She said, "The institutions that support the game also need to be encouraged. In that spirit, the AIU has decide to make a grant of 1 lakh, 50,000 and 25,000 each to the gold, silver and bronze winning colleges. The Sports authorities in those institutions will hopefully take more interest in hockey, and use the monies for hockey infrastructure development."

The Jawaharlal Nehru Hockey Tournament Society, organisers of the event, announced that funds permitting, they will endeavour to organize an European tour for 25 of the best players identified during the Champions Colleges tournament.

The importance of the Nehru Champion Colleges tournament, now in its 18th year, should be viewed in the context of Universities providing a feeder route of talented players to the Indian hockey team.

Until the recent growth of Hockey Academies, Universities were the major grooming centres for Indian hockey. Former stars like Ajitpal Singh, B. P. Govinda, Muneer Sait, Inam-ur-Rahman, Inder Singh, Charles Cornelius, V. Bhaskaran, Zafar Iqbal and Mervyn Fernandes were all spotted during the inter-university matches, from which they straight made it to the national teams.

he Photograph of the Month for March 2011 is of the overflowing crowds in the Ranchi Astroturf Stadium for the women's hockey final between home team Jharkhand and Haryana.

An article by Uthra Chaturvedi on the National Games that appeared in the Indian Express is given below for context:

As the Cricket World Cup makes its way past meaningless, uninteresting games that are a mere formality in the format that has been adopted in this particular edition, there is something called the National Games that will finally draw to a close on Saturday.

In the 12 days that the event stretched to, more than 10 lakh people visited various stadia, outnumbering the official stadium capacity several times over.

The day India played their opening match of the Cricket World Cup against Bangladesh in Dhaka, the mega sports complex in Ranchi was overrun by people, making it difficult to walk.

What this means is that after the Hockey World Cup and the Commonwealth Games, this was yet again an assertion of the fact that the Indian public sticks to cricket only because they don’t get to see, hear, read about anything else.

In Ranchi, the National Games have been the biggest ever sporting extravaganza. The crowds at every venue was heartening to see. In hockey, there were people on rooftops of adjoining houses - their owners too engrossed in the matches to care about trespassers on the roof.

It may not be time for a revolution in Indian sports yet; but if the Commonwealth Games was the first instance of Indian fans actually turning up to appreciate sports other than cricket, the Jharkhand National Games did the same on a smaller, but equally important stage – the hinterland - from where the next line of Indian sportspersons will actually come.

he Union government has slashed the Sports budget for the current financial year by almost two-thirds. The sports budget for 2011-12 is 1,121 crores, down from 3,564 crores in the last budget.

Sports Minister Ajay Maken said, "The decrease in budget allocation for this year is a matter of concern for us. We are hoping that this will be rectified in the revised estimates that are done midway through the financial year, around October. We will be going to the Planning Commission and concerned authorities, and hope to get more then. Otherwise, the London Olympics programme may be impacted."

The Sports Ministry and Sports Authority of India have formulated a new programme called Opex London 2012. The athletes are being divided into two groups - the elite medal prospects who will be given special treatment, and rest of the national teams across Olympic disciplines.

Said Ajay Maken, "Medal prospects and the top 10 in selected individual disciplines will be managed and funded through the National Sports Development Fund. The preparation of national teams for all Olympic disciplines, including training, equipment support and exposure, will be implemented by the Sports Authority of India."

oordarshan Sports, launched on March 8, 1999, is India's only 'free-to-air' sports channel in the country. While the rest of the television channels obsessively showed the ongoing World Cup Cricket, Doordarshan Sports showed most events of the 34th National Games in Jharkhand live. That included live coverage of the National Games men's and women's hockey competitions.

he March 2011 Visitor of the Month is Dinesh Roy, who wrote the following to BharatiyaHockey.org:

Indian players and coaches should start serious planning for the London Olympics. A failure to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics, after having failed to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, will doom Indian hockey.

Statistics by B. G. Joshi

he March 2011 edition of Fun with Numbers lists some hockey internationals who also represented their country in another sport.

MEN'S SPORTING DOUBLES

Category	Player	Country	Hockey	Dual Sport
Hockey + Cricket	Eddie Mcleod	New Zealand	vs. Indian Army (1926)	Test match against England in 1923
	M. J. Gopalan	India	Indian tour of Australia/New Zealand (1934-35)	Test match against England in Kolkata in 1934
	Brian Charles Booth	Australia	Melbourne Olympics (1956)	Played Test cricket (1961-66)
	Peter Rawson	Zimbabwe	Cairo African Games (1983)	Cricket World Cup (1983)
Hockey + Football	Muhammad Hussein	India	Indian tour of Australia/New Zealand (1934-35)	India vs. South Africa in Football (1934)
	Anthony Braganza	India	Test Series (1951)	Asian Games (1954)
Hockey + Athletics	Richard James Carr	India	Los Angeles Olympics (1932)	Los Angeles Olympics (1932), 100m relay
	Ram Swarup	India	India Probables team in 1947	Asian Games (1951), 400m relay Gold
Hockey + Cycling	Shahzada Shahrukh	Pakistan	London Olympics (1948)	Melbourne Olympics (1956), Cycling

WOMEN'S SPORTING DOUBLES

Category	Player	Country	Hockey	Dual Sport
Hockey + Cricket	Sophie Devine	New Zealand	Oceania Cup (2009) at Invercargill	T-20 Cricket final in Lords (2009) vs. England
Hockey + Athletics	Nova Peris-Kneebone	Australia	Atlanta Olympics (1996) - Gold Dublin World Cup (1994) - Gold Champions Trophy (1993, 1995) - Gold	Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games (1998) Gold Medals in 200m and 4 by 100m relay Sydney Olympics (2000), 400m and 4x400m relay
Hockey + Basketball	Patricia McKillop	Zimbabwe	Moscow Olympics (1980) - Gold	Played Basketball Internationally
Multi-Sport	Shrin Khusro	India	International Tournament in Delhi (1968)	Cricket vs. Australia (1975) Basketball Championship in Kuala Lumpur (1970)