Red card for Indian hockey

Sports authorities, players, media and the federation must share the blame for forcing Indian hockey into a corner. The failure of the team in the Olympic qualifier is also a huge loss for international hockey, which will never be the same without India, writes Prabhjot Singh

The 70-minute game Great Britain and India played at Santiago on March 9 has not only left hundreds of thousands of ardent fans of hockey in India disappointed, dejected and shocked but has also inflicted a critical and historic blow on the sport which may never be the same again.

Hockey and India would no more be synonymous. The wizardry that Indian players exhibited from 1928 till 1956 had amazed the sports world. Even the media went ga-ga over how the frail-looking South Asians had the ball sticking to their magic wands, the sticks. Now the same media and the sports fraternity are wondering why the decline, set in motion in the 1970s, could not be arrested by a nation which aspires to be a world power.

True, no major international cricketing event is considered complete without the participation of an Indian sponsor. Unfortunately, hockey does not enjoy this lavish patronage from big business houses.

Now games and sports go by the money they bring. The idea of permitting only amateurs in any sports event organised under the larger umbrella of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was given a burial long time ago. Now there is only one category of sports, the professional. Besides the state, the biggest support any international or national sports federation can get for the successful holding of its events is from television.

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Hockey has been no different. It has been bending backwards to get as much live coverage of its events on TV channels worldwide as possible. And ouster of India from the Olympics for the first time in 80 years has come as a major blow to these efforts. Hockey viewing is not only restricted to South Asia or South East Asia. The South Asian diaspora is growing worldwide.

If there was a demand to view the Olympic hockey qualifier in Canada or Australia, it essentially came from the South Asian community settled there. With India no more there in Beijing, both the IOC and the Beijing Games Organising Committee or their licensee for TV rights may not be able to sell the telecast rights for as much as they would have done with India among the participants. It is definitely a big commercial or financial blow. Not only that, even sponsors for hockey coverage may have second thoughts now. Advertisement support may also decrease. Needless to say, interest of the Indian hockey fraternity would never be the same in an Olympic event where its team is not participating. It is not only ardent fans back home who are shedding tears over the Santiago debacle, many in the International Hockey Federation (FIH), who may otherwise be rabidly critical of the way hockey is administered and run in the country, as well as the hockey community worldwide are shell-shocked at the turn of events. It is not just about India not reaching the prime competition but is about hockey becoming poorer. The game will never be the same again for the fans.

In fact, March 9 may be a landmark in determining the future of the game. For the past several years, there has been an ongoing debate on the growing number of the Olympic disciplines, making some bidders withdraw because of the enormity. The International Olympic Committee had considered shedding some team sports, with hockey topping the list, from the Olympics. A section of the IOC members had been supporting continuation of hockey in the Games primarily because it gave the third world countries in general and India in particular an almost assured place in the Games. But now this privilege too has slipped away from India’s grasp. And one may not be surprised if the 2012 or 2016 Olympic games are held without hockey. So the hockey-supporting IOC fraternity is equally sad and dismayed at the turn of events. The list of mourners at India’s undoing has been large and unending.

If hockey is shown the door after 2008, it would be yet another sad development. And the blame would fall on India, a hockey nation that did nothing either to maintain its supremacy or sustain the popularity of the game.

If hockey has shrunk in the country, the blame must be shared by all, including game managers, state, people, industrial houses, media, and educationists. No one perhaps remained sincere and committed to the national sport.

Resting on laurels alone does not help, especially in the modern-day world where innovations matter. Sadly, Indian hockey has remained aloof to outside influences. It also did not learn any lessons from its unending list of failures, both at home turf as well as abroad.

India never won a major tournament at home turf in men’s hockey. We failed in the 1982 World Cup organised in Mumbai and then followed a defeat in the New Delhi Asian Games some months later. India did organise two editions of the elite Champions Trophy but ended up at inconsequential positions on both occasions. Everyone connected or associated with the game has to take the blame. Our repeated failures may have necessitated changes in the team as well as team officials, including the coach, assistant coach, psychologists and the physical conditioning expert. But one thing that has stayed put are the administrators of the game. They do not change. Administering Indian sports is perhaps the ‘birth right’ of a select few. Every time we suffered a debacle, we started talking about building a road to the future. But where have all the roads to the future gone which we had been building since the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games when our hockey bosses went in for an unprecedented practice of having joint captains for the Olympic hockey team? It was the beginning of our ‘historic firsts’. In 1968, we failed to make it to the final for the first time. Eight years later in Montreal, it was the first time we failed to make it to the semifinals.

In the 1986 World Cup in London, we took the wooden spoon for the first time. In 1991, we played in an Olympic qualifier for the first time. And in the 2006 Asian Games, it was again the first time that we could not make it to the medal round. And 2008 has capped it all. And it has become the first time that India will not play in the Olympic Games.

Realising that India has had too many debacles and there is an urgent need to arrest this trend, the FIH and the IOC had put their brains together a couple of years to come up with a programme for revival of Indian hockey. But this joint initiative of the world’s two biggest sports bodies did not go down well with the Indian hockey bosses. The results are before us. Where do we go from now is anybody’s guess.

1960 India’s unbeaten run in the Olympics is brought to an end by Pakistan, who beat them in the final at Rome. After winning six gold on the trot, India have to settle for the silver.

1976 India fail to reach the semifinals of the Olympics for the first time

1986 India suffer the ignominy of finishing 12th and last in the World Cup at Willesden, London

2006 India miss out on a semis berth of the Asian Games for the first time

2008 India fail to qualify for the Olympics, also for the first time