With 63-61 margin, Narinder Batra re-elected as president of International Hockey Federation

Express News Service

CHENNAI :  First up, the unsurprising news from Lausanne. Narinder Batra has been re-elected as the president of the International Hockey Federation (FIH) during the body’s 47th Congress. The surprising bit? He just about hung on, to claim a 63-61 victory over Belgium’s Marc Coudron.

In a press conference that followed the two-day virtual Congress, Batra took cognizance of the result and promised to address all issues.

It can be safely assumed that the Asian and African federations delivered Batra the narrow win while the European and the Pan-American bloc voted against the incumbent because of several issues, chief among them being the blue riband international events clustered in India (the next junior men’s World Cup and the senior men’s World Cup will also be held in India).

While FIH will not release details of which federation voted for which candidate, Batra promised to address the concerns of the ’49 per cent’ of the members who voted against him. “From the election results, you can say that nearly 49 per cent of the members want change,” he said during the press conference.

“I want to understand their issues and make sure we implement them. It’s my duty to understand where they feel I didn’t live up to expectations. Our job in the next three years is to make hockey the most preferred sport,” he added.

Big push for Hockey 5s

One way the FIH plans to do that is to try and accelerate the growth of hockey 5s. In fact, at one point, Batra said ‘it is my dream’ to watch hockey 5s at the Olympics. The FIH hopes they can eventually have both the traditional 11-a-side version as well as the hockey 5s at the Games together.

“I have had this conversation with the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC assured me there is no danger to the 11-a-side format at the Olympics. Hockey 5s being at the Games will only help increase visibility of the sport,” said FIH’s CEO Thierry Weil.

At the basic level, they plan to take hockey 5s to countries that haven’t hosted any FIH event to date. “We have our bid process ongoing for the 2023 Hockey 5s WC. I can only say there is going to be nice surprises. We will have it in places that haven’t hosted an FIH event,” he added.

There are even plans to have a mixed 5s event but the journey to the Olympics is a lot more complex. However, one thing is certain. It looks like the FIH have put most of their eggs in the hockey 5s basket as a way to promote and take the game forward.

‘Complete saving mode’

Like most International Federations, the FIH too is dependant on the Olympics for healthy financials. After it was postponed last year, the FIH had to take a loan from the IOC to make ends meet. While the FIH refused to reveal the size of the loan, Weil did say that ‘they are in complete saving mode’. They are right now monitoring the pandemic situation and hope that air travel will be opened soon.