HOW do you fix Indian hockey? The slide that set in with the advent of astroturf has brutalised the psyche of the players; the new rules have devastated the quick passing sub continental game and the appalling state of the game’s administration has dealt a complete body blow. Indian hockey is yet to recover from the ignominy of the Montreal Olympics. Even till then, India was a powerhouse. At the Munich World Cup in 1971, India bagged bronze; at Amsterdam in 1973, India finished second while 1975 in Kuala Lumpur saw India finishing on top of the hockey pyramid. But artificial turf altered the state of balance in world hockey forever with India unable to adjust to the pace and velocity of the new game. New Zealand strangely beat Australia in the final of the 1976 Montreal Olympics. This is where the deathknell was first sounded. Its reverberations are still heard and felt.
Since Montreal, it has only been downhill slalom for Indian hockey. Willesden in the UK was one such trough, last year not being able to qualify for the Olympics in Chile was another disaster. Willesden was one of the darkest days for Indian hockey, India finished 12th in the 1986 event. The 1998 Bangkok Asian Games where Dhanraj Pillay spearheaded the campaign was an aberration, otherwise it has been headed only one way – south. In the process hockey in India has gone belly up and nobody really cares. As another experimentum crucis is underway with Jose Brasa, India embarks on a 12 Test tour against four teams all ranked significantly higher than us – England, Belgium, Spain and Netherlands. The campaign started on Tuesday.
Though I am quite intrigued by Brasa’s comments before emplaning – he said that India is traveling to Europe to learn. Learn what? Hockey? Agreed that India has come a long way since Moscow, but we cannot be re-learning hockey. Nine teams from the Montreal Games did not participate at Moscow due to the western nation embargo and India managed to attain the pinnacle by accident one last time. And it was a struggle defeating Spain 4-3 in the final. Since then the drought continues. But even as Jose Manuel Brasa tries to pick up the pieces, the real malady remains at home on Indian shores. How does one jumpstart the administrative set up? How does one clean the Augean stables? How does one get rid of cabals that control Indian hockey and Indian sport in general. Talking to former hockey Olympian Aslam Sher Khan, I was dismayed to hear of his sheer hatred for the present administrative set up. While he may have hit out at the IOA hangers on because he was ousted from the ad hoc committee, the reality is that he like so many of us feel the pain. The pain when our hockey team loses or gets hammered. It hurts, believe me, it hurts. Even today when India puts it across Pakistan in a free flowing sub continental style hockey grudge match, it goes a long way in applying balm to the wounds.
But the sores fester but once the effect of the balm wears off, it is back to disjointed and maladroit playing formations resulting in vanquishings. FIH chief Leonardo Negre may have installed a fellow Spaniard as India’s hockey coach and is backing Suresh Kalmadi to clean up the KPS Gill dispensation. But one cabal replacing another is not such a good idea. I wonder why the sports minister MS Gill doesn’t take a more active interest in Hockey India’s functioning. He seems powerless when it comes to Hockey india. The other day Negre was sequestered by Bengal Hockey president JB Roy and Amrit Bose, secretary of the defunct Indian Women’s Hockey Federation. Negre has promised them that elections to the unified body will be held this October in a transparent manner. Roy and Bose have apprised Negre of the autocratic functioning of the IOA which seems to have seized and appropriated power in the hockey apparatus.
The fact that a five member delegation will meet the International Olympic Committee boss Jacques Rogge to apprise him of the functioning in IOA is a good sign. The hockey World Cup is to be played in India next year. It provides India with a great opportunity to restore some faith and dignity in its tattered psyche and morale. I am a little wary of Brasa’s methods though. On the European tour, he wants India to play an alien game. He is talking of playing a one touch, total hockey style where forwards double up as backs and the defenders move forward to strike at the enemy camp. India is not familiar with this style. Total football and now hockey is practised by the Europeans, in the main the Dutch who gave birth to this style under footballer Johann Cruyff. This is a more body contact type of bruising hockey using long passes, rather than the style played by India and Pakistan where the edifice has been skills, short passing game replete with body swerves and dribbling.
India has three big competitions next year – the World Cup and Commonwealth Games at home and the Asian Games at Guangzhou. It doesn’t get bigger than this. Not only do our players have to respond to new methods, but more importantly officialdom has to rework and remap its energies to realise that HI or IHF or whatever nomenclature one wants to give it is run professionally. Cabalism will only act to the game’s detriment. Former players with an insight and intelligence also need to be utilised. It has to a collective and participative effort. You cannot shut out people who believe they have something to give and surround yourself with henchmen and yes men.
