Turmoil in hockey
Renewed hunt for gold

The worst part about defeat in sports is that it tends to shoot down the morale of a team and its followers. But the positive side is that the shortcomings 
are highlighted and brought to the forefront. The on-going turmoil might 
be a blessing in disguise that Indian hockey had been waiting for, 
writes Prabhjot Singh

When various TVchannels broke news of the Indian Olympic Association taking over the reins of the Indian Hockey Federation after removing its president Kanwarpal Singh Gill, one of them intriguingly ran a TV commercial with the punch line,“Daag Acchhe Hain” in between. The world hockey fraternity in general and India in particular has all these years remained a mute spectator to the national game being assaulted, bruised and blotted before it virtually started sinking into oblivion.

Though not even the best of detergents can wash off the ‘Daag’ (blots) left behind by men like K. Jothikumaran, yet the parent body of Indian sports has done a commendable job in showing the door to men responsible for getting the country out of Olympics for the first time in 80 years.

Without this action, India was running the risk of losing a chance to host the 2010 World Cup that the Federation Internationale de Hockey (FIH) had offered Delhi on a platter. Otherwise too, recent dismal performances were tarnishing the good name earned by greats like Dhyan Chand, Roop Singh, Balbir Singh Sr, Prithipal Singh and Udham Singh for Indian hockey.

“True, without the sting operation by a TV channel, the IHF would have continued to inflict more damage and injuries on the sport in the country. The ‘daag’ with which the TV channel smeared the face of the IHF has done the sport a lot of good as it left the IOA as well as the government with no choice but to act,” says Olympian Pargat Singh, hoping that this action of the IOA, third in the history of hockey, would bring the country back in reckoning.

“I am greatly relieved at the IOA action. Better late than never,” says Balbir Singh Senior, the great old man of Indian hockey, adding that “India can always stage a come back as it has the potential. All that is needed is professional administration of the sport in a transparent manner”.

Balbir Singh Senior, with three Olympic Gold medals to his belt, has been a witness to all the IOA interventions. In 1975, when he was the manager of the Indian team that won the only World Cup for India, the team was served an ultimatum that either it would go to Kuala Lumpur under the IOA banner or stay put at home. Second time it happened in the 80s when the then IOA chief Raja Bhalendra Singh headed the Indian Hockey Federation for a short while.

“Indian hockey needed a Perestroika. Now it has come and we should make good use of it,” says Sukhvir Grewal, former Olympian and national coach. “We have to put aside all these aberrations and start planning and building for tomorrow. Now the IOA has the onerous responsibility of resuscitating the game after pulling it out from its coffin,” adds Grewal.

Several other Olympians and international players including Jagdeep Gill, Hardeep Grewal, Baljit Dhillon, Harpreet Singh, Jagdev Singh and Baldev Singh echo the same sentiments. “Now we should put all our minds together to work out a programme or a plan to restore the pristine glory of this sport,” they add.

Indian hockey has always cherished controversies, both savoury and unsavoury. But never before an allegation of money for place in the team or for holding a tournament could sufficiently be proved in public eye. True, no one can be, unless proved, pronounced guilty. But sequence of events corroborated by incrementing evidence made the country hang its head in shame with the man given the honorary job of administering the national game being caught on camera accepting “money”, which by any logic, he had no right to accept in the manner it was offered to him. His explanation lacks both conviction and logic.

Though players had always been complaining of being denied their pocket money or match allowance by the team officials, yet cash for getting a player included in the national squad before being named a standby, has at last brought to surface underhand actions that had been constantly ruining the game.

The IOA has done well in naming an ad hoc selection committee with Richard Charlesworth in an advisory role. Now is the time for the new body to act and prove not only to the rest of the country but also to the world that Indian hockey can bounce back and regain its glory. The foremost task is to convince the FIH that Delhi can be a world-class host to the 2010 World Cup. Besides, the new look IHF will have to put behind all dismal performances of its teams for the past 40 years and start building for tomorrow so as to repeat a 1975.

Reviving national championships at all level - sub junior, junior and senior - besides making the selection and training programme transparent are the immediate tasks facing the ad hoc committee before a new regular team takes over the reins.

Gill era ends

The moment the Indian Men's Hockey team lost to Britain at Santiago, K.P. S. Gill probably knew that anyone who cared about the game would want him sacked. It wasn't great intuition on part of the ex-top cop, but something he was getting used to. For someone who had handled the sport for so long, he had little to show in terms of results. No wonder that the IOA's decision to suspend the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) received complete backing from the sports minister M S Gill and former Olympians alike.It was a unanimous decision to get rid of Gill and the IHF as the turmoil had become to big to be ignored. At a time when other sportsmen, (not just cricketers), were earning oodles of money, the national game was starving like a drought-hit area.For Gill, the downfall was initiated by the sports minister M.S. Gill, who following K Jothikumaran's shocking video in which he was caught in camera accepting bribe, had asked the IHF chief to step down from his post.

It is important to note that under Gill's tenure, the Hockey nationals were not held even once; never throughout the 14 years he was at the helm. Every time there was a call for Gill to step down, he refuted it and said he was 'changing the face' of Indian hockey. He did start the initially successful PHL, but that too was restricted to certain cities, failing to reach out to the masses; its fundamental reason for coming into existence. The teams too kept complaining about getting handpicked players by the IHF, and not being able to make their own squad as should be followed in any league.

All in all it was high time for hockey's oligarch to quit, and when he thought he was untouchable, above any minister and even the good of the game, it is good to see that he has been dismissed as part of the problem that had been affecting Indian hockey. — Agencies

Missing bus to Beijing again
Vaibhav Sharma

When the Indian Men's national hockey team lost to Britain in the Olympic Qualifiers, all eyes at once turned towards the women's outfit. Although the women's team had only once qualified for the Olympics in the past, hopes were high that they might be up to the challenge (call it the Chak De effect).

They started at the qualifiers, being held in the biting cold of Kazan, on a positive note beating Russia 3-1 in the opening game. But then a stumble, almost unexpected, halted the optimism surrounding the chances of catching the bus to Beijing. India lost to the lowly-lying Netherland Antilles 1-2. Their captain Ernestina Schreuder's post-match comments rubbed in the reality and magnitude of the loss. “Never for a moment did we think we could win this match”.

Their coach Bas Swildens added , “This was the best match since I took over the team in 2005. We once beat Spain in a friendly, but this is totally a different game. India’s statistics must be terrible. They entered the circle more than 20-25 times against a couple of times by us. This victory is definitely a boost,” he added. The Indian eves were clueless and were probably under a little too much pressure due to the disaster their male colleagues had worked up at Santiago. They were in desperate need of a win against Belgium to keep the task at hand within fathomable distance. Despite the loss to Netherlands Antilles, a lot of people still believed that the next game against Belgium would be an easier tie for the team. But living up to their erratic image, the Indian team lost to Belgium 2-3. The loss squeezed out all the life from the challenge to be put up by the team. The loss also made the equation extremely tough for India to have a realistic chance of making it to the final.

To add to the existing set of problems was the fact that India was to face the tournament's strongest team by far the USA. The task at hand was to beat the USA and then France in the next game to try and fit into the equation for making it to the tournament final. But once again the team found themselves at the receiving end, infact this time a rather severe beating. USA defeated India 4-0 and wiped out any chance that the team had of making it to the Olympics. Despite the optimism, despite the hope, the result turned out to be the obvious cliché everyone was deliberately ignoring.

Although the loss was a disappointing one, all the blame cannot be put upon the players. They worked hard at the training camp, studied videos and used technology to aid their natural game and undertsnad their opponents better. But the ways of Indian hockey are such that before the team had left for Kazan, they played two practice matches; both of them on grass, while the tournament was being played on astro-turf.

The appalling results that we see today are not the result of some sporadically futile displays by the team. They are the result of some meticulous ill-planning by the game's governing body and years of hard work to slowly erode any hope for Indian women's hockey to make their mark. Probably a change in guard at the top will usher in, if not a new era, then at least some common sense into the way the country takes care of its national game.

SPORTS MAIL

On-field rivalry

This refers to the incident of Harbhajan Singh slapping Sreesanth on the field during the recent IPL match at the Mohali stadium. It is really surprising that in a non-contact sport like cricket, two sportsman from the same country got into such a ruckus on the ground. These things are common in other sports like football and rugby where the tension levels are enough to make one lose his cool at the drop of a hat.

There are many players in football who have played for their national teams with distinction, but yet never been cordial with each other. France’s talismanic duo of Thierry Henry and Zinedene Zidane are one such pair. The two never saw eye to eye, but combined to score the goal that sent Brazil packing in the last World Cup.

P.K. Sharma, Chandigarh