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On April 7, 2018, the Indian men's hockey team will open their campaign in the Commonwealth Games against traditional rivals Pakistan in Gold Coast. A few hours later, on the same day, the eleventh season of BCCI's billion-dollar Indian Premier League (IPL) will commence in Mumbai.
So, will the average Indian sports fan and the media prefer to focus on Gold Coast or on Mumbai? A naive question, indeed, if the past is anything to go by.
Big money and bigger scandals
Scorching hot Indian summers have, over the last decade, become synonymous with cricket's Indian carnival. The brand value of IPL 2017 was $5.3 billion and viewership of the 2017 edition recorded 1.24 billion impressions.
It is practically impossible for one to be in this country and remain unaffected by the IPL phenomenon with even music stations on FM radio competing with each other to air trivia and live updates. Everything else takes a back-seat for a month and a half, as the sole focus rests on the teams, franchises, players, scores and not least, the celebrity owners posing animatedly in the stands.
It has always been a David versus Goliath struggle with regard to the stature of games like hockey against the might of cricket in India irrespective of the fact that the latter has often been mired by huge controversies and scandals.
Earlier this year, on January 29, the Bombay High Court, while hearing a petition filed by former IPL chairman Lalit Modi, observed that it was the aim of young players only to make money in the region of ₹5-10 crores playing in the Indian Premier League and that it was "no more clean entertainment."
This year, the IPL has been in the news well before the event commenced, courtesy of two Australian players who will not be participating in the tournament after being involved in a ball-tampering incident in South Africa.
By disallowing the disgraced Australians from playing in India's cash-rich league, the IPL organizers have sought to earn moral high ground. Yet, levels of integrity have never been too lofty in the history of either the league nor of the game in general for the administrators to lay claim to such elevated morality.
Marred by allegations of match-fixing in the late 1990s, which led to bans on Indian players including skipper Mohammed Azharuddin, the cricket fraternity in India and elsewhere vowed to clean up the game in the interest of millions of fans who idolised their cricketing heroes. Eighteen years have passed since the epic verdict, but cricket continues to be as controversial as ever.
Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals will return to the IPL this season. In 2015, the clubs were banned for betting activities by key officials in their fold. The sentence was pronounced by a three-member committee of the Supreme Court of India.
A former BCCI president was also pulled into the Supreme Court in a conflict of interest case wherein it was argued that the head of the country's cricket board cannot also own a franchise which competes in a tournament organized by the same board.
"Disrepute has been brought to cricket, the BCCI and the IPL to such an extent that there are doubts abound in the public whether the game is clean or not," Justice Lodha, Supreme Court judge observed in the light of the above controversies.
In ten years, a cricket league has attracted more controversy and scandal than perhaps any other sports league in modern history. The paradox is that cricket and cricketers were never short of money even before the commencement of the IPL. With hefty salaries, benefits and perks, beefed up by lucrative endorsements, Indian cricketers were never in the zone of financial struggle.
Contrast that with what Indian hockey has gone through.
Rise from the ashes of Indian hockey
On January 12, 2010, Pakistani actress and singer, Salma Agha, proposed to do a series of fund-raisers for the Indian hockey team. The national team had been denied their incentives and salaries for the previous year.
The humiliation apart, it was a sad tale for the players who hailed from humble backgrounds and had neither sponsorships nor endorsements to fall back on. Yet, through good times and bad, the standards of integrity and professionalism in the team have always been at their highest.
The Odisha government has made a landmark decision to sponsor the Indian hockey team and other governments would do well to pay heed to the same.
Not least, the Indian sports media prefers to cover cricket in any form, between any two sides, in any corner of the globe.
As the Indian hockey team sweated it out in Ipoh last month, the sports headlines focused on the cricket between Australia and South Africa. What's more, even the ICC World Cup qualifiers received a lot of more coverage than sports happening within our borders. An Indian cricketer gets at least a crore more than his counterpart in the hockey team.
It would be foolish to seek parity in remuneration given the difference in popularity between the two sports. A level playing field, however, is required for international players in any sport to be recognized and appreciated for their efforts.
At the end of the day, the sport is meant to be about passion, pride, and an all-out effort to achieve national glory. The Indian media has a responsibility for sure to promote Indian sports other than cricket. Until such time, games such as hockey will continue to languish in the shadows of a looming cricketing empire.
