Economic Times: Indian Hockey: Playing by the changing rules

By Joy Bhattacharjya

It’s been a bit of a while since there was any good news in Indian hockey. But this one is a real cracker. Hockey India is proposing a fundamental change in the rules where field goals will count for two, with penalty corners counting for one. It’s a welcome development to anybody tired of teams banging in balls into the penalty area hoping to get an infringement, and then bringing their ace drag flicker to finish off the play. Penalty corners have their value as the garnish to the game, as the main course and primary offensive option, they can get a bit tiresome.

It is ironical that hockey is moving in the direction of encouraging flowing field play, because almost every rule since the seventies has taken the game away from the sub-continental style of play. First, IHF president Rene Frank’s worries about the quality of grass pitches in Canada during the 1976 Montreal Olympics made him decide on going for artificial turf, which suited more physical teams. The ball changed, the penalty corner hand stop and the bully-off also disappeared and Indian hockey just failed to adjust to the new era in the sport.

Hockey is far from being the only sport to change rules – most games have seen changes for a variety of different reasons. One of the primary issues is when coaches find ways to make the rules work for them. Professional Basketball had this terrible period where, as the game approached the end, the team leading would just stall and pass the ball around, and the only way to get the ball back would be to foul. After one such NBA game, where the Pistons beat the Lakers 19-18, with just 4 points scored in the fourth quarter, the league decided enough was enough and soon introduced a 24 second shot clock.

Like every innovation, it had its critics, but basketball without a shot clock is almost impossible to envisage today. The NBA got its next shot of adrenalin in 1979, when the three point shot was established, an extremely vital move as the height advantage inherent to the game was to a significant extent neutralised by better shooting skills for the extra point.

Other rule changes are often necessitated by the need to make the sport more attractive for television. Table tennis decided to go with a larger ball after the 2000 Olympics in an effort to slow down the action and increase the length of rallies. The number of points in a game also changed, with major protests from the Chinese, who thought that it was a direct attack on their domination of the sport. The jury is still out, but table tennis has not really picked up as expected after the rule changes. Even a sport like tennis, which has huge television value decided in the seventies that tiebreakers were a better option than indefinitely trading service games, as matches had to end by a certain time. In tennis, it’s always the doubles that gets hit first, as viewing patterns seem to indicate that singles action tends to get much higher ratings than the doubles. As for cricket, ODI and T20 have seen the rule changes to suit TV. The change in the LBW law in 1972, which discourages deliberate padding, is probably the most significant law change in Tests in recent times.

It always amuses me when fans sagely nod their heads and tell me how Test cricket is the only original and pure form of the game. I can quite see how the 17th century sport of ladies wearing hooped skirts gently bowling underarm at two stumps resembles Dale Steyn steaming in to Michael Clarke.