Sports goods manufacture in undivided Punjab was centred at Sialkot. In 1947 the Hindu and Sikh manufacturers of Sialkot moved to Jalandhar and started again, and the Muslim workforce and owners who stayed built Sialkot into what it is now.
Both cities are now major world producers. Sialkot makes footballs and surgical instruments; Jalandhar makes cricket bats, hockey sticks, inflatable balls, boxing equipment and gymnasium goods.
Jalandhar supplied hockey sticks to a country that won six consecutive Olympic golds, and the Punjab hockey nurseries and the Jalandhar factories were part of the same world.
The industry has been repeatedly criticised over child labour and has been the subject of certification schemes since the 1990s.
Two cities eighty kilometres apart, in two countries, making the same goods with the same techniques, descended from one industry that was split in 1947, and they do not trade with each other.
The trade moved with the people. Manufacturers from Sialkot restarted at Jalandhar with the same skills and no equipment, and the industry was rebuilt from nothing within a decade.
The work is subcontracted down a chain of household units. Stitching, lacquering and finishing are done at home and paid by the piece, which is why the child labour question kept returning and why certification has been hard to enforce.
The willow for bats comes from Kashmir and the better grade is imported. Wood supply rather than labour is the industry's constraint.