Indoor Field Hockey

Indoor field hockey is an indoor team sport, a type of floor hockey, that was derived from field hockey. The sport originated in Germany to enable players to practice during winter, which later became a fully codified sport of its own. Indoor field hockey is currently played by all field hockey playing nations.   A lot of aspects of indoor hockey, like passing and scoring, is similar to that of field hockey. The balls used are of the same size, and players use same size sticks. But there are some changes adopted to make the sport suitable for indoor playing. Some of the changes are: The field used is much smaller, with smaller goal posts. The playing area is fully surrounded with sideboards and there are no out-of-bounds. Each team has 6 players, with one player serving as the goal keeper. Players are allowed only to push the ball and cannot strike it. The ball cannot be raised except while attempting to score a goal, and only from only within the shooting circle. Matches are played in two 20-minute (30 minutes in some leagues) periods. The team that scores the most goals wins. In case of a tie, overtime and penalty shootouts are used to decide the winner. Indoor Hockey World Cup, held every fours, for both men and women, is the highest level international competition conducted for the sport. EuroHockey Indoor Nations Championship is another major international competition contested by European countries.