Today India lost heavily 2-7 to Australia in the quarter final of the World Hockey League Finals - they lost all their 3 pool matches as well. Anyway they would be going to Holland in summer for the World Cup but Pakistan having failed to win the Semi-finals at Kuala Lampur last year wont be going anyway!
To me this is only due to artificial turfs being introduced in hockey in the 70’s which made this sport out of reach of developing nations. The main reason to cite for the change by FIH is that they wanted to make the sports popular in the world but the fact remains that hockey is at the same level of popularity in Europe and Australasia as it was in the 70s. But it declined in popularity in India and Pakistan. There have never been huge crowd to watch in Europe as there have been in India and Pakistan and only recently a huge crowd watched the Junior World Cup hockey match between India and Pakistan in New Delhi but only the for the 9-10th rankings. Very very sad.