OTAGO PROTEST.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20632, 5 June 1935, Page 9

OTAGO PROTEST.

Method of Selecting N.Z. Side Criticised. Per Press Association. DUNEDIN, This Day. The Otago Hockey Association has decided to protest to the New Zealand Association at the method of selection of the New Zealand team for the first test against the Indians. It is pointed out that none of the selectors visited the south end of this island and that both Southland and Otago consider they have been neglected.

A Selector’s Comment

The message was referred to Mr S. G. Holland, Chairman of the New Zealand Hockey Association and one of the New Zealand selectors. He said that the New Zealand team had to be selected before the Indians played Otago. There would not have been sufficient time subsequent to the Otago game. “ The selectors have a close personal knowledge of the capacity of the Otago players,” said Mr Holland, “ and all due consideration was given. In the selection of any national side there are bound to be differences of opinion and this is no exception. Some Otago officials might consider that players nominated by the Otago Association were worthy of a place in the team, but the selectors held different views of their capacity.”

PHYSICAL TRAINING.

Address by Indian Hockey Player. The history of physical training in India was outlined in an interesting address by Mr Harbail Singh, a member of the Indian hockey team, to pupils of the Christchurch Technical College yesterday afternoon. Mr Singh, a picturesque figure in his distinctive head-dress, emphasised the importance of physical training in a sound general scheme of education. As director of physical and health education at Khalsa College, Amritsar, in the Punjab, he was well qualified to address an audience on his chosen subject, and his pleasing style and wide vocabulary showed a striking mastery over the English language. The principal, Dr D. E. Hansen, who had associated with him on the platform members of the staff and the prefects of the school, welcomed the visitor, and expresesd pleasure at the visit, earlier in the day, of Mr Behram Doctor and members of the team. Mr Singh spoke first of the importance placed on physical strength by the Hindus of the early period of India’s history, and the evidences of this from the records of marriage and other ceremonies. There were athletic sports, in honour of gods and heroes, a religious significance always being present in such exercises. The object of physical training was to develop the muscles and to make the tenure of life more secure. Physical Development Forgotten. Dealing with the changes that had come in the Christian era and the advent of the British to India, Mr Singh said that emphasis had been laid on the literary side of education and on the acquisition of information. “ The aim of education,” he said, “ is to evoke all the beauty and perfection of which the individual is capable. But it is not possible to have a sound mind in an unsound body, and the development of the body was forgotten in the formulation of Indian educational policy.” The universities became places merely for examinations, teaching students to be nothing better than clerks, all brain and no body. The students were filled with second-hand goods, and no opportunity was given for the use of their creative faculties. The whole lot of undergraduates were ground through the common mill of examinations, taking no account of personality. In thanking Mr Singh for his address. Dr Hansen said he had been surprised to hear so much about the neglect of physical training in India when the country could produce such a splendid body of athletes as the Indian hockey team.