Sunday 7 February 2010

Good morning,

The day that elections in India will be hold or not is today, once again no article about this event.

Today we have 2 official announcements of WC squads, both India and Pakistan have published their teams.

For India a bit of a surprise came out with the news that Rajpal Singh will stay as captain.

Sandeep Singh is back to the squad, free of injuries but also free of the captaincy.

But much more as a surprise is the fact, if we are not mistaken only 2 players of the U21 team of last WC Juniors made it into the nationals.

And then Pakistan, the squad is announced and it was a wise choice to bring back Salman Akbar as goalkeeper.

Also good to see that for the first time Wouter Tazelaar and Jos Geijsel are also mentioned as part of the squad.

Wouter is for more than one year one of the persons behind the recent success but was not mentioned before.

But what about the hockey match final which is scheduled for today? At tournaments and at latest news you can read the updates.

And this afternoon we will know how far (behind) India is in relation to neighbour Pakistan.

Hardly a few hockey academies versus many hockey academies.

Big difference for India, for a long time compared with the green shirts, was the lack of hockey academies and booking results with juniors.

Everybody knows the results at the World Cup Juniors June 2009, where India became number 9 (Pakistan 5th).

The Asia Cup U18 (Final between Pakistan and Malaysia) India went 3rd so this afternoon is the third opportunity for India.

We follow the news for you with great interest.

From Malaysia the final of the MHL will take place between Tenaga and Sapura, surprisingly not with KLHC (former Ernst & Young team) which holds most national players.

Last news comes from Trinidad where the selection committee must choose a new coach.

Good news as they got a top coach from the Netherlands.

Rob Haantjes who was a successful coach with National League Club SCHC in the Netherlands, is not holding a FIH certificate.

For us this is the most surprising news this morning because in the Netherlands hockey courses are very structured and takes 3 years to get all diplomas.

But for Trinidad a FIH certificate of participation of one week WC matches has much more value, the world upside down.

Have a nice day and keep smiling.

Hockey Asia