The FIH Executive Board (EB), chaired by FIH President Dr. Narinder Dhruv Batra, held its last meeting of the year on 8-9 November at its offices in Lausanne, Switzerland, where it selected India to host the 2023 FIH Hockey Men’s World Cup (13-29 January 2023) and Spain and the Netherlands to co-host the 2022 FIH Hockey Women’s World Cup (1-17 July 2022). More information on this decision is available here.
Furthermore, the EB discussed a wide range of topics including:
- Hockey5s
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 organized and act as qualifiers. 16 teams per gender will take part in the first FIH Hockey5s World Cup.
- FIH Hockey Pro League
The EB received a detailed report on season 2019 and the ongoing preparations for the second season of the FIH Hockey Pro League, which will start on 11 January 2020 with the 2019 Women’s League winners, the Netherlands, playing China away. This second season of the annual global League involving hockey’s best national teams in the world, Men and Women, welcomes another powerhouse of international hockey, India (in the Men’s 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.
- FIH Hockey Olympic qualifiers
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. It also reiterated its full support to the FIH Umpires and Officials as publicly mentioned by FIH CEO Thierry Weil earlier.
- FIH Intercontinental Cup
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 FIH Hockey 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 FIH Pro League to replace the bottom team who will be relegated.
- FIH World Rankings
As announced by the EB in March, on 1st January 2020, the FIH will launch a new match-based FIH 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 on the FIH Tournament Management System. The number of points exchanged will depend on the result of the match (win, lose, shootout win/loss or draw), the relative difference in ranking points between the teams before the match and the importance of the match (part of a major tournament or a one-off test series, for example). A more detailed explanation will be published towards the end of this year.
The next EB meeting will take place on 13-14 March in Lausanne.
