New rules come good in the One Thousand Hockey Legs Delhi Cup 2011

Match stops once a team establishes five-goal lead, coach among the playing eleven, but cannot move beyond both 25-yard areas, he can also coach the team with 2-minute time outs.

These new rules were in the forefront in the recently concluded One Thousand Hockey Legs Delhi Cup 2011.

These new set of rules, designed to make first-time hockey kids comfortable and allow them to enjoy hockey as recreation, without fear of defeat, were on sharp focus on the three days the event was held in Delhi, recently.

The tournament, held at the main and second pitch of the latest World Cup venue, Major Dhyan Chand National stadium, was for the kids below the age of 15, and they were playing first tournament of their career.

The organizers, Hockey Citizen Group, invited eight schools of Delhi where they introduced hockey this year and were novel enough to put in place these modifications that suit the psyche of schools hockey.

Some schools could make good progress in terms of training and forming teams while others were not due to various factors. So, a level playing field was not on view for these eight teams. The rules were thus designed to keep playing at the forefront rather than winning or losing.

“Despite our best efforts some schools could not progress the way we would have expected to, due to infrastructure, academic pressures, and the degree of support the school extended to hockey boys. But the students enrolled in our schools are equally enthusiastic despite differing set ups, aspirations of parents and schools. So, we wanted to offer them level playing field”, K. Arumugam, founder and CEO of Hockey Citizen Group which runs novel One Thousand Hockey Legs project in five cities, reasons.

“Our first concern was all teams should enjoy hockey. The young kids take winning and losing very seriously, often start fighting among themselves for not scoring or letting a goal in. If a team loses badly with big score, the boys stop coming to hockey, it takes lot of pains to bring them back on rail. Also, schools take the defeats badly. We saw for ourselves the schools stopping teams altogether on heavy defeats, as they consider it damages the institution’s image. So, we decided to play safe. The game was stopped once the wining team establish five-goal lead”, he further explains.

“This also prevent some players getting over-confident and then fade out”

Strictly speaking, most of the players were below 13, and it would have been ideal to play them in a six-a-side or on smaller grounds. Those could not be done. It was, accordingly, allowed the coaches, who trained the boys, to be in the playing eleven. This is expected to bolster the morale of the weaker teams. The time outs of 2 minutes to set right course for struggling teams, too helped avoid one-sided matches.

A perusal of the 18 matches held in three days concur this. Only one school scored five goals and the matches had to be stopped at that.

Some strong teams did not like coaches playing, as it obviously reduce their dominance, but they were convinced of the new concept of enjoying hockey rather than mere winning.

On the lighter side, some coaches pulled out of the tournament, citing silly reasons, perhaps to avoid ‘exposed’!

We had a pool of coaches to play for the teams in such cases.

Dharam Pal Singh of SVB, Ashok Nagar, Mahesh Dayal of Faith Club, Karan Johar, brothers Ritesh and Hitesh – these three are stadium trainees and regulars — Alam, AFBB School coach, Prasant, DESU team player, Deepak Joshi, SAI coach, Himanshu Dhiman, our Sunday volunteer-coach were among those coaches who motivated the kids being part of their playing eleven.

Some teams turned up with shortage of players. They got guest players to make up full team. This offered fringe players a chance to play who would have otherwise spent their time on the bench.
As a result, no team went without winning a match. We made happy of as many players as possible.
Unfortunately, media did not turn up to witness these new things and record their impressions. Had it been, public also would have had an idea of what’s went on.

On management side too there were some novel attempts. The first two teams were jointly declared Gold Winners, third and fourth teams as joint Silver winners while the next two as Bronze Medallists. This is again to give the budding hockey players a boost for having taken part in the tournament — and the six teams had medals of differing hues written on their certificates.

The winners Trophy, a statue of beautiful male hockey player – purchased at infamous Busselton (Australia), mounted on a wooden pedestal, was thus shared by SVB Ashok Nagar and Govt. Sr. Sec. School, Begumpur.

Even the chief guest of the opening ceremony, Brig HJS Chimni, 1975 World Cup goldie, was engaged in a chit-chat in front of all school teams rather than asking him to do a monologue which is otherwise the normal thing in such gathering.

The coaches of the national stadium collectively presented Man of the Match award, and care was taken the sticks went to deserving young kids only.

Eight rising players were selected, besides three Players of the Tournament.

16 best players were also selected out of about 180 who played the tournament. These Best of Delhi OTHL will visit Kanpur and play against OTHL Kanpur teams.

Hopefully, Hockey Citizen Group will come out with more innovative rules that suit schools hockey that time too.

Captions (from top)

Tournament Poster
A coach playing along side the team

Teams line up for the opening ceremony

Suman Kumar, Mukul Kr. Sharma and Brijesh Kumar won jointly the ‘Best Players of the OTHL Delhi Cup 2011

Rising stars (Sayed Maqdoom Ali, Rajeswar Mehto, Sushil Chauhan, Ajay Kumar Sharma, Naveen Bhatt, Kishore Arya, Hasrat Ali) pose with their gift

Note: Complete set of rules are online at http://othl.stick2hockey.com
More photos and information on our official face book: ‘One Thousand Hockey Legs’