Field hockey

In field hockey two teams of eleven use curved sticks to drive a small hard ball into the opponents' goal; the ball may only be played with the flat side of the stick. Matches today are mostly played on artificial turf.

History

Stick-and-ball games were known in ancient Egypt, Persia and Greece. In Mahmud al-Kashgari's dictionary the curved stick used to strike a ball is called "chögen" — the same word that names Azerbaijan's mounted game of chovgan. The rules of modern field hockey were written in nineteenth-century England, and the International Hockey Federation (FIH) was founded in 1924. Men have competed at the Olympics since 1908 and women since 1980; India is the most successful team with eight Olympic golds.

Major competitions

The Olympic Games, the FIH World Cup, the FIH Pro League, the EuroHockey Championships, the Asian Games and the Asia Cup.

Field hockey in the Turkic world

Türkiye and Azerbaijan compete in Europe, and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Asia. In the Turkic world the game's oldest relative is mounted chovgan — Azerbaijani chovgan, on UNESCO's heritage list, keeps alive a thousand-year tradition of striking a ball with a stick.