Every second in India, a child is born – a rate despised by us and envied by the world. In the present circumstances, that child will be brought up, into a time when the nation is fresh off from a memorable World Cup win (pioneered by a captain with the ‘midas’ touch), into a time when every product that he/she or his/her family is using is being endorsed on T.V by cricketers(famous, infamous – pretty much everyone) and mostly into a time where every street is invariably occupied by people of almost every age group wielding their bats, trying to emulate what their favourite cricketer would do on the cricket field. Needless to say, the child will be raised in a cricket crazy nation.
How easy will it be to teach that kid the trivial fact that despite this craze, officially our national sport is hockey and not cricket? -
‘Very easy’.
How hard will it be then, to convince the same kid?-
‘Extremely hard’.
THE GLORY DAYS
For a moment, let us forget the sorry state that Indian hockey has been in for the past few years. Let us take a trip down memory lane, to a time before the Indian independence. Our team was full of legends. The manner in which our team bamboozled oppositions was admired by enthusiasts, envied by the opposition and eventually aptly rewarded by event organizers. With players like Dhyan Chand, Roop Singh, Udham Singh, Prithipal Singh, Balbir Singh Sr. and many others in their squad, the Indian juggernaut was rampant at every event most notably, The Olympics. Crushing the opposition was a day-to-day routine for them. Score-lines like 10-0, 6-0, 9-0, 3-0 and in one instance 24-1 (against USA in the 1932 Olympics) in India’s favor, were regular occurrences. Said one newspaper in awe of India’s performance,
“Perfection is perilous, for it tempts the gods. For once, this was proved wrong for even the god of weather paid tribute to the genius of the Indian players. Rain clouds, which had threatened to ruin the game, vanished into the blue, and thousands of spectators spent a happy hour marvelling at the incomparable artistry of the Indian team”.
They were not ones who would buckle under pressure. An instance to justify this point occurred in the 1936 Olympics, held in Hitler’s Germany. Our team squared off against the home team, Germany in the final and surprisingly was a goal down after the first half. With the disadvantage of not playing at home accompanied with playing in such a hostile environment, everything pointed towards a German victory that is before the second half began. India came back and blasted eight goals to win the gold medal again (it is worth noting that the goal scored in the first half by Germany was the solitary goal scored against India throughout the 1936 Olympics). Stating that everything was hunky-dory at this juncture would have been an understatement. We were the champions of the world. Choosing hockey as a national sport was therefore an obvious choice. Despite the laurels of the past, we were still bare-witness to the slow and steady demise of enthusiasm towards hockey in India. Why?
THE DOWNFALL
This can mainly be accredited to our players’ adaptability to the synthetic ‘Astro-Turf’ grounds. When the playing turfs were changed from the grassy surfaces to the synthetic ones, our team was caught “off guard” mostly because of lack of exposure to such playing conditions. Not much was done by the administration to take care of facilities. This agony was further multiplied with the upsurge of passion of the Indian public towards cricket especially after the 1983 Cricket World Cup. The only way hockey was going to go thereafter was down.
Continuous misfires at international events, disappointing performances at crucial junctures and a less than appreciable administration tainted by corruption scandals, became regular occurrences. The Indian Hockey Federation was also not fully playing its part in rejuvenating the hockey culture in India. It came into the line of fire many times in the past few decades especially when their decision to appoint an ex-cop KPS Gill, responsible for ending the insurgency in Punjab, backfired. Gill’s tenure was considered to be somewhat of a misrule which eventually ended in him being fired and the IHF being disbanded by the Indian Olympic Committee (IOC), leading to the formation of Hockey India (HI). Even initiatives like the Premier Hockey League (PHL) lasted only three editions primarily because of lack of revenue returns and reluctance of corporates to invest in it.
Moreover, the present team has not been able to deal with pressure. No doubt their run in the Commonwealth games 2010 was encouraging, but their performance in the finals against Australia was juvenile to say the least as they were demolished 8-0. Every disappointment in the field of hockey accompanied by every accomplishment on the cricket field spelled doom for the once ripe hockey culture in India.
REMEDIES
So what do we do now? Change our national sport to cricket? Lay waste to one of the greatest sporting legacies of the world? Absolutely not, for it will be a slap on the face of the greats that were responsible for it. The only dignified way out would be to make the administration more accountable. Players should also be more vocal in voicing their discontent so that governing bodies like HI or the Sports Authority of India (SAI), can take up the responsibility to troubleshoot those problems. Most importantly, the number of synthetic turfs in India should be increased. We should take a cue from the top ranked nations in hockey in the contemporary world and make training on the synthetic surfaces imperative not only for national and international level competitions but for state and district level competitions as well (an expensive yet necessary proposition), so that adaptability does not become an issue for our players. All of this would provide a platform for the governing bodies to rope in corporate sponsors and increase funding so as to make initiatives like PHL, a success. This would be helpful in terms of scouting talent and honing it in the national interest. Recent developments like the patch up HI and the IHF are positive indications towards a stable and accepted administration.
All said and done, the above remedies are nothing short of a wish-list formulated by hockey enthusiasts like you and me. The reality of the situation lies in one fundamental question. Will our hockey team be able to emulate the past glory or create an even greater legacy? Time alone will answer that question. We can just hope that it doesn’t remain a mute spectator.
