India to host 2023 Hockey Men’s World Cup

ISLAMABAD: The FIH Executive Board (EB) selected India to host the 2023 Hockey Men’s World Cup (January 13-29) and Spain and the Netherlands to co-host the 2022 Women’s World Cup (July 1-17).

The board meeting that was chaired by FIH President Dr Narinder Dhruv Batra also decided that in order to further boost the development of hockey globally through the promotion of its 5-a-side format — “Hockey5s” — the EB has decided to create a FIH Hockey5s World Cup, with the inaugural edition planned for 2023.

Continental Hockey5s tournaments will be organised and act as qualifiers. As many as 16 teams per gender will take part in the first Hockey5s World Cup.

The EB received a detailed report on season 2019 and the ongoing preparations for the second season of the Hockey Pro League, which will start on January 11, 2020 with the 2019 Women’s League winners, the Netherlands, playing China away.

India (in the men’s league) has also been included in the next league. Also, it includes a new match schedule which will reduce the travel of the teams by half, therefore decreasing costs for teams, benefitting athletes’ welfare and reducing the impact on the environment.

The EB expressed its full satisfaction with the format of the recently completed FIH Hockey Olympic qualifiers and outlined the great moments of hockey, the attendances and the audiences.

In order to promote competition between teams from different continents every year, FIH will launch in 2021 an annual event for the highest ranked teams not competing in the Pro League. It will be an 8-team tournament in a single venue for each gender.

The competing teams will be invited based on the FIH world rankings at the end of the previous year’s FIH Hockey Pro League. From 2022, the FIH Intercontinental Cup champion will be promoted to the following year’s Pro League to replace the bottom team who will be relegated.

The FIH will launch a new match-based world rankings system. This new system will:

* Increase opportunities for all National Associations to gain ranking points.

* Accurately reflect current performance.

* Provide weekly rankings and live narrative to every official match with the impact of the result on the world rankings table being known immediately.

* Remove subjectivity and create a system that is fair to all without the need for Continental weightings.

* Encourage playing official international matches.

* Encourage targeting the highest profile tournaments for best performance.

* Provide the opportunity for all nations who play international matches to have a world ranking.

Ranking points will be exchanged between the competing teams in every official inter­na­tional match recor­ded. The next EB meeting will take place on March 13-14 in Lausanne.