Article by R A Hunter

Many of you will remember a time when words like Kevlar, carbon fibre, drag-flick were not part of the hockey lexicon. More common terms were bumpy field, broken stick, undercut and sodden ball. Yes, balls were leather cricket balls painted white. Sticks were made of wood held together by glue and twine.

Hockey as we know it started in England in the 1880s. Sticks were cut from ash saplings with a bend in them. With the introduction of the game to India in the second half of the 19th century, mulberry became the timber of choice because it was better in absorbing impact without breaking.

The difficulty in growing a perfect hockey stick on a tree led to the construction of a two- piece version. The handle, which was tapered to a splice, was inserted into a head, glued and bound together with string. The head could be made from a harder piece of wood in order to constantly absorb the pressure of hitting a ball, whilst still maintaining its structural integrity. The handle was flexible so it would bend to produce hitting power. Some of you may even remember penalty corner hitters illegally replacing some of the wood in the head with lead. Initially these sticks had a long curved head with a square end. This changed after the 1956 Olympics when the world became aware of the Indian dribble used by the Indian and Pakistani players. This involved running with the ball out in front of the player and moving it quickly from the fore stick side to the back stick side by turning the stick over. For this move to be accomplished with speed and ball control, the head of the stick was shortened with the curve increased.

The emergence of artificial surfaces in the 1970s led to the game becoming faster and harder hitting and wooden sticks could not cope with the additional pressure put on them. Not the least because they were rarely waterproof and the water absorbed from the surface shortened the functional life. Advances in materials science have led to the modern hockey stick which is made of fine fibres woven together and enclosed in a resin. The sticks are strong, lightweight, surprisingly flexible and capable of imparting great power to a strike. And development continues. One of the recent breakthroughs is the introduction of nanotechnology – whatever that means – into hockey stick design and manufacture.