New Indian Express: Tale Behind Sultan Azlan Shah Cup

By Swaroop Swaminathan

CHENNAI: As you make your way towards the city, you don’t even need to consult people on the road, or various apps on the phone, to know whether you are on the right track.

The city does it for you — the word IPOH is written in capital letters on one of the myriad limestone hills that lie on the periphery. It’s huge, not dissimilar to the HOLLYWOOD sign. But comparisons to the silver screen begin and end there.

While the latter doesn’t sleep, Ipoh, it’s fair to say, almost refuses to wake up. The locals do not know the meaning of a traffic jam, a short walk covers the city centre, and while shops are open beyond 10.00 pm, there are a few that pull down shutters at the first sight of sunset.

This cycle of life in Ipoh, 175.4km from Kuala Lumpur as the crow flies, rarely changes. However, for two weeks in the year, there is a small change. A welcome visitor: international field hockey. But how did it all start?
It was a chance talk between Sultan Azlan Shah, who would later become the Sultan of Perak, and Sri Tan P Alagendra, who was the then deputy president of the Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC), that set it all in motion.

“About 30 years ago, when Sultan Azlan Shah was the president, and I the deputy president, we used to have frequent discussions on hockey,” Alagendra reveals.

“Although he was a senior member of the royal family, he always had time to talk about hockey. At least three times a week, we would talk about hockey.”

It was during one of those talks that they decided to have a competition in Kuala Lumpur.

The ideology was two-fold. Apart from bringing world-class teams to their doorstep, it would also enable fans of the sport to watch teams in the flesh; something that would otherwise only be possible if the masses travelled to the Olympics or World Cup. The tournament was born, and they already knew teams would be interested in playing, because of the 1975 World Cup.

“We, as a nation, had already hosted the 1975 World Cup,” Alagendra says. “We had invited FIH and readied pitches in two different sides of KL, and teams were happy with the World Cup.”

That was the first step and the Cup, which was held for the first time in 1983, was the logical conclusion.

But Ipoh wasn’t the set venue. KL also held the event, and it was biennial in nature, before Ipoh permanently got hosting duties in 2007. The reason behind the shift, according to Alagendra, was money. “We had to pay a lot of money to rent the stadium, and expenses were exorbitant, so I suggested we move the tournament from KL to Ipoh. I had already asked teams whether they would be open to such a move, and they said ‘we would have no problems and will pay airfare’ as long organisers took care of accommodation and internal transport. That’s how the tournament became a permanent fixture in Ipoh.”

Now, they had to bring in the crowds. “We (organisers) decided to make it free of cost, as we just wanted the people to come and enjoy good hockey.”

And to this day, the tournament has never charged the public for gate money since shifting.

The competition is also a sort of favourite among fans of the game. The official website received lots of unique viewers over the last two weeks, and even otherwise, it is very important for the hosts. “This is the only chance we get to play against big teams, unless we go on tours, and even then it’s never the same thing as a tournament,” Malaysian coach Stephen Van Huizen reflects.

“Both of us can play 20-25 players in training matches, and it’s never the same. It’s a place where we can test our players for Olympic or World Cup qualifiers.”

One of the main reasons why this tournament has an official slot on the FIH calendar, and that’s not an easy thing for an invitational event.