Hockey Will Be the Best at CWG - Baskaran


By Anand Philar

New Delhi, Sep 28 (IANS) The hockey event will provide the highest level of competition at the Oct 3-14 Commonwealth Games considering the quality of teams in the fray, says Vasudevan Baskaran, who led the Indian hockey team to a gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.

"I expect the hockey competition to be at a much higher level than any other sport, with the possible exception of athletics, at the Commonwealth Games, the reason being that the world's top-ranked teams are participating," Baskaran told IANS in an interview.

"If you look at the men's tournament, you have seven teams who are in the top-10 of world rankings. Except for European sides like the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, all the other top teams are taking part in Delhi," he added.

Australia, the triple gold medalists, are ranked No.1 followed by England (4), South Korea (4), New Zealand (7), Pakistan (8), India (9) and Canada (10) in the men's competition.

However, in the women's section, the top four will not be present and England are the highest ranked at five, ahead of Australia (6), New Zealand (7) and India (11).

Baskaran pointed out that the teams would be familiar with the conditions here since quite a few of them had taken part in the World Cup in February-March at the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.

"Most of the teams are thus quite familiar with the Dhyan Chand Stadium pitch and hence I expect them to be performing at a very high level," Baskaran said.

The former India coach felt that it would be a cause for jubilation if the Indian men's and women's teams even make it to the podium.

The Indian men have never won a medal at the hockey competition that was introduced only at the 1998 Games held in Kuala Lumpur, while the women claimed gold at the 2002 event in Manchester and were silver medalists at the Melbourne Games in 2006.

  

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Comment on this article

  • Satish Chandra, Buffalo, NY, U.S.A.

    Tue, Sep 28 2010

    India's nigger-slave media people have to stop reporting on the White Master and his servants and start reporting on the greatest living Indian. I am India's expert in strategic defence and the father of India's strategic program, including the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program. I have shown in my blog titled 'Nuclear Supremacy For India Over U.S.', which can be found by a Yahoo search with the title (and, if necessary, clicking on cache then clicking on title in blog archive),

    How the C.I.A. Killed Bhabha and Shastri:
    about how Robert Crowley, former Assistant Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations of the CIA, gave documents of his own top secret operations to his friend, historian Gregory Douglas and described in detail how the C.I.A. has done “business” with Russian intelligence agencies for many decades, how the C.I.A. directly arranged the plane crash which killed Homi Bhabha but relied on Russian intelligence agencies, with which it did “business”, to assassinate Shastri who had given a go ahead for an Indian nuclear weapons program. The Russian intelligence agencies large parts of which were brought on the C.I.A.’s payroll brought down the Soviet Union. After a letter of mine in Indian Express in the early nineties which appeared under the editor's heading “Grab This Opportunity” regarding a Russian proposal to form a Russia-China-India alliance, P. V. Narasimha Rao sent the head of India’s submarine-launched ballistic missile program to Russia to get help, where he died as Shastri did. When, in a letter to the press, I pointed out that this was the “help” the Russians had provided, the Russians hastily withdrew a delegation that was visiting India.

    After British rule, India has been under C.I.A. rule. I have shown in my blog that all terrorism and insurgencies in the Indian subcontinent and in much of the rest of the world is sponsored by the C.I.A. Both Pakistan’s ISI and India’s RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) function as branches of the C.I.A. and participate in terrorism and insurgencies throughout the Subcontinent, under direction of the C.I.A. Yes, the ISI secretly supports the Taliban but it does so under direction from the C.I.A. whose modus operandi is support for ALL sides of a conflict to control the course of the conflict in service of its own goals. The goal of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and partial occupation of Pakistan is eventual occupation and overt colonial rule over the Subcontinent as a whole. This will not be permitted and all those participating in this enterprise, including the U.K., will be duly punished see my blog. The document leak currently in the news has been made in preparation for abandonment of this goal and withdrawal from Afghanistan because of steps I have already taken for the nuclear destruction of New Delhi and then the coast-to-coast destruction of the United States by India with 5,000 thermonuclear warheads and extermination of its population s

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