Predictably, India were named hosts of the 2023 Men’s Hockey World Cup. Not so predictably, Spain chipped in as co-hosts with fancied Netherlands for the Women’s World Cup to be held six months earlier.
The FIH Executive Board selected the hosts of its showpiece events after its meeting on Friday, November 8, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and announced the same on its website.
The Men’s World Cup has been slotted for January 13-29, 2023. The Women’s event will be from July 1-17, 2022.
Belgium and Malaysia lost out in the men’s race, having bid for the July 1-17 window.
Five aspirants expressed bids for the women’s competition with Germany (July1-17 window), Malaysia and New Zealand (Jan 13-29) throwing their hats in the ring besides Spain and The Netherlands.
With its expected financial clout, India brooked no challenge from Belgium nor Malaysia for the men’s event.
The Men’s World Cup, however, finds itself squeezed between two behemoths – the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar which ends on December 18 and the Cricket World Cup which starts on February 9, a mere 11 days after hockey’s premier event.
India thus became the first country to host the World Cup for the fourth time after doing so in 1981-82 (Mumbai), 2010 (New Delhi) and 2018 (Bhubaneswar).
Equally crucially, the FIH also revealed the qualification process for the World Cups. In a move away from the Hockey Series events, the onus is now on the continental championships.
The hosts, as usual, qualify directly. So do continental champions to make up five more of the 16-nation World Cup.
However, the remainder of the field will now be filled up by winners of 10 playoffs on a home-and-away basis.
Standings in the continental championships along with continental quotas based on FIH Rankings after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will determine who make the grade for the playoffs.
Significantly, the playoffs, according to the FIH communiqué, will not solely be a double-legged affair in the higher-ranked nation but will be shared by either contestant.
After a grand show at the 14th World Cup in Bhubaneswar and the ensuing financial spin-off, that India would host the 15th edition was perhaps a foregone conclusion.
The host cities, the FIH said, would be announced by hosting nations.
Both events will have four pools of four teams each in the league stage leading to the crossovers, quarterfinals, semifinals and final.
The competition format of the 2023 FIH Hockey Men’s World Cup will be the same as in 2018 while the women’s event in 2022 has been tweaked to share pool and knock-out matches between Spain and The Netherlands.
The semifinals, third place playoff and final, however, will be held in Spain.
FIH CEO Thierry Weil said: “FIH has received excellent bids to host these prestigious events. It was therefore a difficult choice to make. Since the primary mission of FIH is to grow the sport worldwide – which of course requires to make investments — the income-generation potential of each bid has played an important role in the decision.”