n this month's edition, we feature independent India's first Olympic gold medal winning team. This first ever meeting between India and Britain in hockey was won by the former 4-1.

The group photo of the champion XI was taken on the Wembley pitch itself as soon as the final against Britain was over. They are:

Standing : Randhir Singh Gentle, Tarlochan Singh, Kishan Lal (captain), Amir Kumar, Keshav Dutt and Pat Jansen. 

Kneeling : Kunwar Digvijay Singh 'Babu', Lawrie Fernandes, Balbir Singh Sr., Leo Pinto and Maxie Vaz.

Photograph courtesy Balbir Singh Sr.'s personal collection

hree giant companies (IBM, Octagon Group and Ogilvy & Mather) teamed up to produce an advertisement on the Indian Olympic hockey team.

We showed Part I of the sports advertisement in last months edition. The photograph below shows Part II of the same advertisement campaign, which ran as a full page insert in the Wall Street Journal on September 25, 2000.

This campaign on Indian hockey was to be accompanied by a television advertisement shown all over the world during the Olympics. Due to the challenges posed by certain officials of the Indian Hockey Federation, the television advertisement instead featured Stephen 'China' Davies of Australia.

The 1996 Reebok advertisement 'Jinhe Naaz Hai Hind Par' remains the only television advertisement of an Indian Olympic hockey team.

Heroes	National Hockey Team
Event	Field Hockey
Country	India
Keep up with their schedule and scores at olympics.com

Saeed Khan of Pakistan is this edition's Visitor of the Month. This was his email to the Indian hockey website:

I played with some of the members of the Pakistan 1960, 1964 and 1968 Olympic hockey teams - players like the late Munir Dar, Afzal Manna (left-in at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics) and Khalid Mahmood (right-out at the 1964 & 1968 Olympics).

I played both right and left full-back for Punjab. I represented Punjab White (B-team) in the 1962 & 1963 Pakistan National Championship. I played for Punjab Colors (A-Team) in 1964, and the following year, captained Punjab in the 1965 National Championship.

Those days, at least in Pakistan, most of the Olympic players came from Punjab. Each year, after the nationals, the Pakistan Hockey Federation would select 22 players for a coaching camp. In 1965, I was selected for the camp training. 

However, in April of that year, I received a scholarship to go to Philippines to pursue graduate work in pharmacy. So I left Pakistan, and with it, any chance of making the Pakistan team in the 1968 Olympics, where Pakistan would go on to win its second Olympic gold medal.

here was a torrent of criticism against Doordarshan's 24-hour sports channel DD Sports for encrypting its signal at the last minute and asking cable operators to pay a fee for its exclusive telecast of the Sydney Olympics.

DD was asking for Rs 5.90 per subscriber - less than Rs. 6.25 being charged by Star Sports, and Rs. 8 being charged by ESPN.

Major cable networks like INcablenet, Hathway and RPG decided to black-out DD Sports' exclusive Olympic coverage as they were not given enough notice by Doordarshan.

Where did this leave the Indian viewers? They got a total of 19 hours of free Olympic coverage for the entire duration of the games, 11 hours on the national channel, and 8 hours on the Metro channel. All other coverage was on the pay channel.

Delhi had its own problems during the Olympics, with the cable operators in the nation's capital going on a 3-day strike beginning the midnight of September 25. To its credit, Doordarshan shifted the telecast of the crucial India-Poland hockey match from its pay channel to its free-to-air terrestrial channel.

uilding on the momentum generated by a successful Olympic campaign and massive leap in public interest, the 2001 National Hockey League (NHL) in Australia will make some innovative changes to its competition format.

The NHL has dropped one team (North Queensland Barras) from the competition, and shifted the season from the June-July time slot to the February-March-April time slot.

The 6-week 8-team competition will encompass 4 weeks of matches played on a home-and-away basis, followed by a week-long hockey festival that includes the final pool matches, semi-finals and final.

The model is thus a combination of the home-and-away format and the traditional championship-style format. The new NHL season will being on February 24 and end on April 8.

"It provides the extended competition essential to player development," said NHL President Bob Taylor. "I am also excited about the festival of hockey that could surround the week-long tournament."

Canberra's State Hockey Centre has won the right to host the tournament component of the 2001 NHL, over 6 other nominations received from various states.

nly two umpires in the world have officiated in more than 200 hockey internationals. Both are European - Alain Renaud of France and Santiago Deo of Spain.

The Sydney Olympics hockey final between Korea and Holland was Santiago's 230th international. Alain was also present at Sydney, as an Assistant Technical Delegate.

Santiago has been the first choice umpire of most tournament finals in the past few years, expect the Atlanta Olympics (1996) and the Utrecht World Cup (1998), when his home country Spain made it to the final on both occasions.

ow rich is the richest sports body in India - the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The two largest television rights contracts for sports in India have been signed by the BCCI - Rs. 35 crore over 5 years with ESPN in 1994-95 and Rs. 230 crore over 5 years with Prasar Bharati in 2000.

Playing international matches against India is very lucrative to foreign cricket boards too. The Pakistan Cricket Board would gain around $15 million (Rs. 70 crore), including $4.5 million from TV rights alone, if the cricket series against India this winter does materialise.

Staging a cricket match in India has become a high-stakes business proposition for the regional cricket boards. The money given to the hosting associations, and the equivalent amounts given 6 years back when the last television contract was signed, is given below

Match	2000	1994
Test Match	Rs. 1.52 crore	Rs. 15 lakhs
One-Day International	Rs. 1.34 crore	Rs. 10 lakhs
First Class Game vs. Foreign Team	Rs. 1.06 crore	??

By 2003-2004 the member units of the BCCI, barring the Services Sports Control Board, Railways Sports Control Board, All India Universities, Cricket Club of India and National Sports Club (Calcutta), would receive in excess of Rs. 5 crores from the BCCI as their share of money from sale of television rights.

The Board has to be satisfied that the money is used wholly for the development of cricket, in the form of improving infrastructure in the existing and new stadiums, creating indoor facilities, installation of floodlights and purchase of equipment.