June 1, 2008: Balbir Singh Sr.’s training manual Golden Yardstick: In quest of Hockey Excellence’ will be released by the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh tomorrow 16.30 hours at his residence in New Delhi.

The 170-page, glossy, long size book depicts tests for assessment and development of hockey skills in an illustrative way.

This is Balbir Singh’s second book after his autobiography (Golden Hattrick: My hockey days) published in the early 70s.

The book has about a hundred diagrams to illustrate the basic skills and the ways and means to acquire them.

The 20 chapters in the book are intersped with vintage images, depicting the author’s playing days. Fair amount of contemporary action images also figure in the carefully written book.

Its quite a long time since a book on the game skills is written by any authoritative hockey personalities. Delhi based late Gian Singh used to write books on coaching and umpiring and then a former player (Dubey) from Madhya Pradesh came out with one.

On the occasion of the book release Padamshree Balbir Singh said: “I am happy the book is coming when our beloved sport is undergoing a bad patch. I wish the book helps in its own way for the prospective youngsters to understand the game and perfect the various components of the game early when they start playing”.

The book is published by the Delhi based Field Hockey Publications, which brings out annual treatise International Hockey Year Books.

This is Field Hockey Publications’ only book written by anybody other than the s2h editor.