Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bandy is a winter team sport played on an ice surface the size of a football pitch, measuring 90-110 metres by 45-65 metres, with 11 players per side using curved sticks to hit a cork-and-rubber ball into a goal. It differs from ice hockey in field size, team size, use of a ball instead of a puck, and a goal cage that is 3.5 metres wide and 2.1 metres high, the largest in any organized winter team sport.
Bandy developed as a winter sport in the Fens of East Anglia in England, with early modernization traced to 1813. Its first published set of organized rules was codified in 1882 by Charles Goodman Tebbutt of the Bury Fen Bandy Club.
Sweden and Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) have dominated the Bandy World Championship since it began in 1957. The Soviet Union won all championships until 1981, when Sweden broke an eleven-title winning streak. Finland is the only other country to have won, claiming the 2004 championship in Västerås, Sweden.
Bandy was recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 2001 and fully accepted into the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations in 2004, but it has not been included as a full Olympic event. It appeared only once at the Olympics, as a demonstration sport at the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo.
The Federation of International Bandy (FIB) was formed in February 1955 as the international governing body for the sport, arising from a compromise between Russian and English rules. It has had up to 33 member nations and currently has 27 members. The FIB organizes the Bandy World Championship, first held in 1957.
Bandy is considered a national sport in Russia and is the only discipline to have the official support of the Russian Orthodox Church. More than one million people are estimated to play bandy in Russia. The professional men's league is called the Russian Bandy Super League, with the Russian Bandy Supreme League serving as the second tier.