The Indian Hockey Team.

IN New Zealand in the last month very little has been seen of the exciting competitive side of any type of sport. Racing, cricket, athletics, tennis, hockey, football—for all these this was the dead season. The visit of the Indian hockey team is an important event although the tour threatens to lack anything of that excitement that is bred by keen competition.

These Indians are verily the “All-Blacks” of the hockey world. Hockey, like Victorian football, lacrosse, and baseball, has never been played in New Zealand to such a standard as to enable the players or spectators to appreciate its beauty and subtlety. All that the public can do during the tour is to sit on the bank—“Silent on a peak in Darien”—and realise that they are watching one of the best team games in existence—fast, subtle, exciting, full of brainy tactics and strategy—played by the best team in the world—speedy, brainy, expert to the last degree and sportsmen whom we should be proud to honour. Unfortunately, although a New Zealand team could probably beat that of any other country but India, for all the difference it would make to those uncanny brothers, Rup Singh and Dyan Chand, our players might just as well follow the example of the spectators and sit in silence wondering how it is done!

It may here be said that, in respect of noble birth, native intelligence, education and general culture this team is probably the “Aristocrat” of all teams that have ever played any sport in New Zealand. On the previous tour, Victoria happened to meet the Indians on a cold day and greasy ground, and playing a roughish, jostling game, managed to hold their own for three-quarters of the game. The way in which these Indian sports accepted the (to them) somewhat boorish conditions of the play was an object lesson to all true sportsmen. How free from jostling and interference hockey, properly played can be, may be guessed at when I remind you that hockey is the Indian national sport, because the difficulty of the “untouchables” among the castes does not arise therein!