Dribbling highs and lows
Anil Bhat

Triumphs and Tragedies of Indian Hockey
by Kishin R Wadhwaney. Siddharth Publications. Pages 500. Rs 600.

Having watched Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) matches in the capital during my school days in the 1960s, some of the high points in life have been congratulating the great Major Dhyan Chand at the NDMC ground (now known as Shivaji Stadium) and later being involved in the game for three decades of training and service in the Army. Triumphs and Tragedies of Indian Hockey brought back memories of nail-biting moments of this vigorous game.

Often, one has lamented on the craze and money that a slower game like cricket has generated and the unfair lack of support to hockey and some other games, which form an important part of part of India’s sports heritage and history. The 55 chapters with photographs take the reader on a roller-coaster ride through the history of the Indian hockey, in which the tragedies, unfortunately, outweigh the triumphs. This is despite hockey being a very Indian game.

In Manipur, one of the indigenous local games is ‘Kangei’, a stick and ball game, in which a bamboo bent near the root is the stick, while the ball is carved out of the root of the bamboo plant. A mounted variation of this game, played on local ponies, is ‘ Sagol Kangjei’, or hockey on horseback, which since the late 1850s came to be known and instituted by the British as ‘polo’, a variation of ‘pulu’, as the root of the bamboo plant is known in Ladakh, where a similar mounted game was popular.

Indian hockey, in Wadhwaney’s book, emerges as a game that got mauled by all varieties of non-players—and sadly, few players, too—instead of being nurtured on honourable principles of "play the game in the right spirit" and "let the better man win".

The first tragedy of post-Independence hockey in India is the great body blow the game suffered because of Partition. In undivided India, the hockey talent came mainly from undivided Punjab, where ‘Khiddo-Khundi’ was an old traditional equivalent of hockey, as it came to be known in English.

When India got partitioned, most of the Muslim players were lost to the newly created Pakistan, both West and East, which in 1971 became yet another country called Bangladesh.

In Indian Punjab, Sansarpur, on the outskirts of Jalandhar, was one the ‘cradles’ from which over 20 players, including Ajitpal Sihgh, Udham Singh, Colonel Haripal Kaushik and others represented the country. However, in the 1980s when I was posted at Jalandhar and had the opportunity to interact with some of the veterans there, the general lament was that much more could be done to promote the game and produce more champions from that area. Another region which in post -Independence years produced good hockey players was Bihar’s tribal belt, now Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Northern Orissa. While the North -Eastern States, particularly Manipur, has great potential, various factors, including apathy, shortsightedness and neglect of the region, have caused the potential to remain untapped.

Despite the erosion of undivided India’s hockey wealth with Partition, India scored well in the international arena during the 1950s and most of the 1960s. The decline, which set in from 1968, has more or less continued since. The downtrend is well described in chapters like 1948: India Reigns Supreme, 1952: India’s Dominance Continues, 1956: Balbir and Golden Hat-trick, Some Stars of Second Golden Hat-trick, 1960: India Dethroned, 1964: India Regains Title, 1968: Decline and Slide, 1972: Bronze for India and 1976: India Relegated.

The Gold Medal phase in Olympics stretched from 1928 to 1964 (Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, Helsinki, Melbourne and Tokyo, with the only exception being a Silver at Rome in 1960). One of the tragic losses that Wadhwaney refers to is losing to Pakistan after 32 years of winning.

He also delves into personal strengths and weaknesses of Indian players, which proved to be assets or liabilities. Indian Airlines and Railways earn kudos from him, while the IHF, some officials and senior patrons, particularly the non-playing self-styled and self-serving ones, get flak.

The one who comes in for severest criticism is none other than Mr KPS Gill, former Director General of Police, Punjab. There are at least five chapter devoted to his deeds or misdeeds with none so complimentary titles. Out of the 17 presidents of the IHF since 1925, the first 10 were "ornamental". Naval H. Tata, who held this office from 1947 to 1957, comes in for rare praise for his professionalism. The sports organization like the IOA gets dubbed as "I Owe All" and the Sports Authority of India is referred to as a white elephant full of officials "who have no clue about sport or sports administration".

Wadhwaney is one of the most experienced of Indian sports journalists, with 50 years of investigative work and this book being his 16th. His wife, Asha (nee Bannerjee), represented India against Japan in the 1964 Test matches. Wadhwaney’s style is earthy, racy, and it packs a punch.

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