Pakistan continues to lag behind new-look hockey teams

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan hockey team continues to lag behind some new-look teams while going into 2021 as the country will end up ongoing year at No 17 — the worst ever position in country’s history.

Some mediocre teams like France, South Africa and Ireland are ahead of Pakistan in the ranking. Malaysia (11), France (12), Ireland (13) and South Africa (14) are even ahead of the Pakistan on the ranking list.

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) can confirm that Belgium’s men and Dutch women will finish 2020 on top of the FIH World Rankings.

In January, FIH introduced its new match-based model for the calculation of the FIH World Rankings, with the FIH Hockey Pro League matches that were played in early part of the year seeing regular fluctuations in the standings before the Covid-19 pandemic brought the competition — and all international hockey — to a standstill in March.

The brief return of the competition between September and November saw further exchanges of points between the men’s and women’s national teams of Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and Great Britain.

In the men’s FIH World Rankings, reigning world and European champions Belgium (2496.88 points) sit at the summit in front of 2019 Pro League winners Australia (2nd place, 2385.70), Netherlands (3rd, 2257.96) and India (4th, 2063.78).

Olympic champions Argentina (1967.39) are in fifth, followed by Germany (1944.34), England (7th, 1743.77), New Zealand (8th, 1575.00), Spain (9th, 1559.32) and Canada (10th, 1417.37).

The rankings calculations model moved away from the previous tournament-based rankings system to a dynamic, match-based method where opposing teams exchange points in official, FIH sanctioned games. The number of points exchanged depends on the result of the match, the relative ranking of the teams and the importance of the match.