THE MORE I think about the men’s Indian hockey team, the more I dislike the shape of things to come. The World Cup starts in New Delhi in less than a week’s time and the team is getting embroiled in one controversy after the other and has – more or less – been in the focus for all the wrong reasons.
The time is fast approaching for the Indian players to show what they are capable of on the field. Because off the field they have not covered themselves with glory and it is looking more and more likely that they are not going to bring the house down with their performance in the World Cup.
In the warm-up games, the team has looked disjointed and out of sorts. Why, they even struggled to beat India juniors in the two warm-up games (3-2 in both). It could be said that they are warming up to the task slowly. But, with every controversy, they are putting extra pressure on themselves.
It is no secret that the team is divided into two camps – Rajpal camp and Prabhjot camp. The coach and the players are on one side. The selectors and Hockey India (HI) are on the other.
The players feel that Rajpal is too soft with HI when it comes to bargaining hard for money. They feel Prabhjot is the right guy. They also sense that this is the moment, with the World Cup just around the corner, to strike the right bargain with HI.
HI was against the players signing a deal with AMR for the charity match in Chandigarh. But the players went ahead and did their own thing with AMR, wanting to make a quick buck. It is a different thing that it all didn’t work out in the end. But it showed – quite clearly – that the hockey players are really feeling the heat. They too want to be seen like the Indian cricketers. They too want to become rich (and spoilt) like them.
Come to think of it, it is actually not wrong if the Indian hockey players want to become rich. Comparisons – though always odious – have all along been made between the Indian hockey players and the Indian cricketers. To every sporting forum that you care to go, the topic – almost always – could be “the comparison between Indian hockey and cricket”.
The Indian cricketers are so rich and the hockey players? Well, what about them? Where do they stand? Of course, the Indian hockey players cannot remain unaffected by all these comparisons that are being made – almost incessantly – all around them, day in and day out.
So, the hockey players too want to strike when the iron is hot. The World Cup is here and they want to strike deals. But for that the hockey players have to perform on the field.
You can say a lot of things about the Indian cricket team but you cannot say that they do not perform against the best. They beat the best in the business. They lose to South Africa and Australia. But they also thrash the same teams. So, fans want to chase and follow winners. Sponsors too want to chase winners. No one has time for losers.
When was the last time that the Indian hockey team beat Australia, Germany or Holland in a big event?
Their chance is now. They want big bucks, they want sponsors to follow them, they want to be glamorous like the cricketers. So, they have to beat the best in the business. Rest will follow automatically. The Indian cricketers won the inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa in 2007. Along the way, they beat teams like England, SA, Australia and Pakistan. So, they deserved the ensuing glory that came their way.
But here the talk is that the Indian hockey team will have done extremely well even if they make it to the last four in the World Cup. In the 2006 World Cup they came eleventh. With such dismal performances on the field, you cannot expect the sponsors and the fans to get behind you.
The Indian hockey players want to become rich like the cricketers. Then they have to start winning some matches. Till now, they have talked the talk. Now the time has come for them to walk the walk. In the coming days, if they perform badly in the World Cup at home – as looks likely to happen – then the chasm between Indian cricketers and hockey players is going to become far bigger. And the Indian hockey players will only have themselves to blame for this growing chasm.
