Indian Hockey

Hockey....

Hockey - what a strange sport. It's about 6 people, well 12 actually if you count the other side, running about on a field with sticks in their hands. It looks so awkward and ridiculous. So, I can't even begin to imagine what prompted the Government of India to make Hockey the National Sport. I mean, how many countries have 'National Sports'. We have a national anthem that people barely remember, We have a national song - NO, NOT Kajre Re, we have lots of other 'National' things like the Peacock, the Lotus, the Gandhi family - err no, we don't really have them, they actually have us !!

So yeah, back to hockey and maybe it's possible, that just post independence, we needed to have a feel good factor about things - after all, we had just been liberated from 150 years of colonial rule. So we decided to have a National sport among a whole host of 'National' things. Obviously, the 'respectable' Parliamentarians had not heard about Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Ganguly and gang .... well ... they can be forgiven because these people were not born yet.

So they did the next best thing. They turned hockey into our national sport. And what a choice - absolutely brilliant. India had been winning hockey tournaments, Olympic golds in hockey for the last 20 years or so. Dhyan Chand, the soldier from the Punjab Regt (who retired as a Major) had turned India into a hockey super power - so much so that it was rumoured that good ol Adolf himself offered him a commission in the Wehrmacht when India beat Germany at the 1936 Munich games. Wow... now that was certainly an ego booster.

Then they did the next best thing they could do - they forgot all about it.

Appointed captain for the tour of East Africa in 1948, Dhyan Chand scored 61 goals in 22 matches, at the age of 43! When they returned, he was sad to see that there was no one to greet them on their return. The IHF did not even hold an official reception for the team. This was just the beginning of the apathy. In 1949, after an international career spanning 23 years and innumerable goals and golds, Dhyan Chand retired. He had a minor stint as a coach of the hockey team, but that was not to last.

Dhyan Chand had devoted his life to hockey, and he was marginalised by the petty bickering idiots in the IHF. His son Ashok also played for India. Dhyan Chand passed away on the 3rd of December 1979, asking his sons to look after his medals (some of them had been stolen previously). Because Ashok was at his father's deathbed and therefore late in turning up for the training camp, he was excluded from the Indian team that went on to play in the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Disgusted, Ashok announced his retirement from Indian hockey.

However, the Indian government was extremely grateful. In all it's graciousness and warmth, it bestowed upon Dhyan Chand, a wonderful honour. It came out with a 35 paisa postage stamp one year after he died. So what if they chucked his son out of the team, the stamp should have covered it all. After all, there were almost 2 million Indians licking the back side of the stamp and slapping it on their letters !!! ( 2 million wasn't the population, it was just how many copies of the stamp were produced)

The link to the Stamp

In 1982, when India hosted the Hockey World Cup, the brochures issued by the IHF had absolutely no mention of Dhyan Chand. Ironically, India's arch rival Pakistan highlighted Dhyan Chand's supremacy in world hockey. A picture of Dara (the founder of the Pakistani Hockey team) and Dhyan Chand taken in 1974 was prominent in their publication.

Indian hockey remained forgotten for a long time. Instead of building on our laurels, we simply ignored our 'national' sport. Dhyan Chand and his peers had built a Taj Mahal for Indian Hockey and the IHF turned it into a public toilet. Indian hockey teams never won anything of significance - but that was not because of lack of trying - that was because there was simply no money and no will. Sponsors and advertisers preferred to look at Cricket. In 1983, India won the Cricket World Cup - and that was the final nail in the coffin of Indian Hockey.

We won our last Hockey world cup in 1976. Our record looks even more dismal when we see that after our World Cup win in 1975, we have not been able to enter the semifinal of a World Cup tournament again. And after 1980 Olympic triumph (which most of the American allied countries boycotted), there was no semifinal place for India. Few times we reached close enough, but it was never good enough.

India recently beat Korea 7-2 to win the Asia Cup (9th September 2007). When some of the team members returned to their home state of Orissa, there was no one from the State Government to greet them, felicitate them or simply even to give them a ride back to their homes. “I do feel like a child who did well in his exams, but back home his parents didn’t bother to pat him on his back,” says Prabodh Tirkey the captain of the Indian hockey team.

Poor poor deluded Tirkey. Doesn't he know better than to demand felicitation? He should know better than to demand the State Government provide him with a ride back home? After all, he is a player, and simply playing for the Indian hockey team should be good enough for the like of him. After all, Tirkey isn't a Ganguly or a Tendulkar. He doesn't even have a restaurant or an entire state willing to boo the Indian team if he is not included. He's not a cricketer is he? So why should he expect anything. Who knows, he might get a stamp printed for him as well - all he has to do is die. Poverty and old age will take care of that as well. After all, Nike, Reebok and Visa or even Sona Chandi chyawanprash aren't in a rush to sign him on - or any of his other team mates !!

I mean, why bother with hockey. After all, our cricketers are earning laurels for India. They won the world cup in 1983. They beat Bangladesh recently (after Bangladesh ensured the exit in the ODI World Cup), they've scored innumerable victores over Kenya, Uganda, Namibia - they've even won a few matches against Australia and England. And when we lost the games in South Africa last year, even the 'honourable' members of the Parliament spent a whole hour discussing if Chappel needed to be fired. That's how important cricket is. And guess what, we even beat Pakistan a couple of days ago 3 - 0, that's right, 3 - 0 in this wonderful new form of cricket called T20. Cricket is such a wonderful game.

Hockey is so boring. If there is a tie, why can't players take runs between the two goals? And have a few cheerleaders. Maybe that might bring the masses back to the game.

I think it's high time that we simply stopped playing hockey or any other game for that matter. What's the point. Cricketers get all the money, all the sponsorship, the tax free imported Ferraris - and hockey players get their medals stolen and a postage stamp. Is all that heartache worth it? At this time, I'm just watching the last ball of the India NewZealand T20 match - where we have just made asses of ourselves - yet again !!!

And what's with this Chak De movie anyway? A lot of retired hockey players have been praising this movie and saying that this movie could be responsible for removing the cobwebs on Indian Hockey. That's funny. A movie loosely based on the Indian Women's performance in the 2002 cup? Well, India never cared about the triumph then, what makes them think that having King Khan in a movie will highlight the plight? And the whole thing about Negi being branded a traitor - that's because he played hockey. He should've played cricket instead. I don't recall anyone calling Chetan Sharma a traitor after his full toss to Miandad in 1986 !!

More corporate interest in Hockey will certainly change it's future. One of the big problems we have is that we don't have many games to support. If we had seasons, and seasonal sports - hockey, cricket, football, tennis - fans would not be so fanatical and there would not be as much pressure on players to perform or to be labelled traitors. However, till that happens, let's say a small prayer for Indian hockey and change the channel to watch cricket - yippeeeee