| PHILOSOPHY: Indian hockey is a sleeping giant waiting to explode. It has every ingredient and credential to be the world leader even now, as existed till the 70s. India’s booming economy, its outstanding performance in many sporting disciplines on the international forums, the colossal inflow of monies in to the Indian sports processes, offer an exciting platform for Indian field hockey to prosper. Only that it has to position itself to make use of the emerging ethos. Indeed, Indian hockey is passing through an exciting phase. Hockey can read the pulse of the nation, reap benefits out of its country’s new-found growth. Despite many odds stocked against it, we hope, hockey’s unique place in the country and its imminent rise as a genre that counts, cannot be impounded forever. |
| This is stick2hockey.com’s perspectives on Indian hockey. |
| Having said this, we are also equally aware of the roadblocks – the challenges lie ahead – and the enormity of tasks at hand in getting hockey stayed put in the Indian psyche and improve its image as a brand in the obtaining scenario. If Indian hockey can perform better, live upto its true potential, it can benefit wider sections of its own society – act as a stepping tone for the global hockey to blossom — and also to ensconce hockey’s permanent place in the Olympics. With more than a billion population, read its television potential, and being the second most popular team sport in India, Indian hockey has in it all the trappings of a global giant. Thankfully, the hockey world is aware of this. |
| Stick2hockey.com volunteers its services to the development, improvement and glorification of Indian hockey in its own way. s2h generates and provides information on all aspects of the game to the hockey world. |
| Stick2hockey.com, we call it s2h, works on news stuff. And, tries to contribute in its own way to bring right hockey news to, not only to Indian sports lovers, but also to its vast diaspora across the world. Our objective is to make the s2h a one-stop site for the hockey information seekers. We are making progress, definitely closing in on the target. |
| EVENTS: s2h organized a panel discussion at Jamia Milia University during one of the Inter-University hockey tournament. Most of those who runs hockey affairs in their educational institutions across the country, participated and benefited. Some more events are lined up for the year 2008. |
| BEGINNING: s2h was put on online in the early 2000, the Sydney Olympic year. It has been sourcing information from variety of sources and met with success in bringing more and more new and unknown fans into its fold in its eight years of existence. |
| GROWTH: Considering its limited resources, s2h was started as a feature based web site. Various other related activities of the promoter of the site, K. Arumugam, made its way into the site slowly, enlarging in the process the site’s scope. Relocating the columns Hockey Features syndicated for various newspapers is one such. Display of many vital chapters of Hockey Year Books is another milestone, which is welcomed by many discerning hockey writers. With an eye for history, this site brought home many forgotten heroes and historical landmarks back into the public consciousness. Thus, the s2h is no longer a feature exclusive site, the original tag we attached it to. Regular visitors to the site will agree that this site has broken many news stories — IHF elections, women hockey’s enquiry report, and of late Ric Charlesworth coming to India, to state a few. S2h also takes pride it was able to highlight many hockey events, activities and services that normally goes unnoticed. We have got an enormous amount of feedbacks — and also a couple of court cases. We considered both the acclaim and the anger of some people equally — as our compliment. |
| STATUS: It so happened that the s2h had to become a source for current affairs as well. The technology and the somewhat declining media interest in hockey had seamlessly transformed the s2h into a provenance of news as well. We are happy about it. We accepted the new role with a smile. The site has now been redesigned, made more user friendly, interactive, with more and more add on values. Message boards, slide shows, live commentary, are on the cards. |
| FOCUS: The icing on the cake of course is our renewed focus on India-specific statistics. From early 2008 onwards, our stat section will be updated with as much frequency as is needed for statistics to be effective, meaningful and utilizable. We hope this will in particular help improve the quality of media reports, as it offers correct numbers pertaining to players. We are aware it is easily said than done, but our constant endevour and known virtues of commitment, which you might have noticed so far, will stand in good stead to realize the set out objectives to a reasonable level. |
| APPEAL: Appreciate if something is good with our daily outputs, it will motivate us. Be interactive with us. We are nothing without your involvement. Don’t hesitate to pull us if something in our output is wrong and that if that won’t do any good to hockey, the sport we all love the most. We work very hard to reach you, though we do not have men and material at our service, we are still there because you are there with hockey. All we expect from you is, be interactive with us. You count for us. Our progress lies in your enthusiasm with us. |