BHOPAL, 27 April 2005 — To give a fillip to the game of hockey it has been suggested that India should manufacture synthetic turfs, on which the game is played nowadays. This way hockey becomes more accessible with synthetic turfs easily available at cheaper price.
The above suggestion was made by visiting Pakistan veteran hockey team’s Chef-de-Mission Shahid Pervez Bhandara while interacting with sports scribes here. “A very small country Holland has as many as 400 synthetic turfs which is no comparison to what India and Pakistan have, even if put together,” he pointed out. In Holland, Germany, Australia etc. synthetic turfs are installed even in small schools where children from very early stage are exposed to play on it, he revealed.
While in Pakistan, and it is also true for India, he said, boys coming from villages up to 16 years of age play on natural grass and then at a later stage when the muscles are hardened he comes across synthetic turfs. Here he finds it very strenuous to adapt to the new synthetic surfaces which are energy sapping and have a crippling effect on his performance.
The poverty of the two nations prohibits it to import synthetic turfs at exorbitant prices from European countries.
“Why doesn’t India take the initiative to manufacture synthetic turfs,” he posed the question. Pakistan does not have such an option. If these are produced in India, which is a big country and one of the industrialized nations, then Pakistan would also buy from it as it would be much cheaper.
Thus, more and more synthetic turf surfaces could be provided to the upcoming players from the very beginning to hone their skills matching their counterparts from Europe and other countries.
Thereby, this disadvantage would be overcome easily and players from India and Pakistan could pulverize their opponents once again as their predecessors in the past did, he opined.
Pervez, who is the vice president of Pakistan Veteran Hockey Federation, along with some of the leading luminaries of the past of Pakistan hockey met with sports journalists answering queries while sharing their experiences of their playing heyday. Jahangir Butt, Mohammad Saeed Khan, Safdar Abbas, Nasir Ali and Khwaja Junaid were present on the occasion to field the questions fired by the scribes. Indian international player NS Sodhi was also present along with former Indian Olympians Inam-ur-Rahman and Syed Jalaluddin Rizvi.
Replying to a question Pervez Bhandara said the standard of hockey in Pakistan is much better now. It is improving gradually and is at present among the top four teams of the world, he claimed. “Our endeavor is to be in the top two bracket”, he remarked. To buttress his claim, he pointed out that the Pakistan junior team has won the just concluded six-nation tournament played in Malaysia.
