It is impossible to imagine a side rising to the top in international hockey without a drag flicker in their ranks. It is impossible becaus...
It is impossible to imagine a side rising to the top in international hockey without a drag flicker in their ranks. It is impossible because without a specialist, a team will never be able to take full advantage of the penalty corner. Throw in a few variations and you have a weapon that’s hard to stop. Perfect it and you can rise to the top. At the international level, roughly one-third of the penalty corners result in a goal.
Jay Stacy (the former record holder for most caps for the Kookaburras) is credited as being the first to use the skill in the 1987 Australian Hockey Championships in Hobart. Up until that point, the hit was the preferred option. But the smooth astroturfs made it possible to drag and then flick the ball with amazing power and precision.
The importance of Gurjit Kaur, who helped India their reach first Asian Games final in 20 years
Other teams were quick to find their own stars. Great Britain had Calum Giles. Holland had Floris Jan Bovelander. Pakistan had Sohail Abbas. But India relied on the hit for a long time before they finally found enough astroturfs to give them a Jugraj Singh in 2001.
A similar trend was...
