Re: London 2012 Olympics - Men’s Hockey
As Southie mentioned (and I agree with him), hockey of today is unrecognizable from the 80s.
The introduction of synthetic turf has a lot to do with the decline in Pakistani and Indian hockey. Astroturf has been there in Europe since the 70s and in international hockey since the early 80s. On grass hockey was a slower and more skilful game where dribbling, dodging and short passing were the key ingredients. Since astroturf, it has become a quicker and long ball game with more goals scored from penalty corners. The key attributes are athleticism and organisation. Hard-earned breathtaking field goals seem like a thing of the past
That being said, **Pakistan won the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the 1982 and 1994 world cups on astroturf.
Defensive weakness apart our current set of forwards are just not good or skilful enough imo. They lack co-ordination, fluency and penetration. We should only be copying the European style in defence (because our defence is weak) but when it comes to attacking play/field goals we need to revert to the old Asian style hockey (dribbling and short passing)
Re: bold part, in early 80s rules were different I think. If someone was on wrong side you could just lift your stick and referee gave you a free shot. Nowadays defenders challenge from wrong side. So dribbling and taking the defender on his wrong side is a thing of the past. If I recall samiullah was left-out or left wing. His skills would be wasted today. Makes me sad to watch the game today.