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Indian hockey: hope barely lives amidst mediocrity

Those Olympic golds are our pride but also a glittering burden, writes Rohit Brijnath

When I speak to the hockey player, first I ask this: how have people responded when he has told them he represents India in hockey?

"I get two reactions," he says. "Some say the system sucks, it's all politics." This is the despairing spectator, who sees India unable to make the Asian Games semifinals, who sees India finish 7th, 8th, 7th, 7th at the last four Olympics, 5th, 7th, 10th, 11th at the last four World Cups, and believes hope has fled.

But maybe hockey is entwined in our DNA, for half the people he meets say this: "They say `you guys must do something for Indian hockey.' There is a lot of emotional attachment to the game, people want us to do well, they haven't lost faith."

The hockey player in this story is not an abstraction, but a person. Over a 100 times he's shrugged on a shirt of Indian blue, a young man of considered thought, and this is about all I can say. He'd prefer not to say his name. You understand. Coaches disappear on a whim, so could his future for a wrong word.

Inevitable

India's hockey performance at the Asian Games drew outrage, but it, too, will pass. After all, losing to China was not a surprise, but an inevitability. This is a game long stripped of its dignity by men blind to the future. No country owns a game forever, but occasionally it seems India is now unfamiliar with hockey.

I call the hockey player because he's the one we see and swear at, who is the end product of a system unashamed of its mediocrity, who must deal with our stubborn refusal to let go of the past. Hockey still has 11 men like in 1936, and 1956, but mostly the game has altered beyond recognition. Those Olympic medals (8 golds) are our pride but also a glittering burden.

The hockey player is not given to discourtesy, so he says he is "polite" to older players, that he has "great admiration for their achievements," but that "I do not enjoy conversations with them."

"Everyone goes on about our glorious past and it's one of the reasons for our downfall, we haven't moved with the times." Secondly, he says, "if they (older players) don't understand times have changed, then how will common people understand."

He offers an example. He speaks of 30 astro-turf grounds in Melbourne, yet two in Bangalore, three in Delhi, one in Mumbai, or thereabouts. "Kids play hockey abroad on turf at five, I started playing regularly on astro at 18.

Obviously their basics are better, while I had to unlearn what I had learnt on grass. But former players don't understand that."

He tells of a domestic game, played at such slow motion, that "if I trained for two days a week I'll manage domestic hockey." But international hockey, all hard, furious running demands the most extraordinary daily labour to be competitive. Which is why, he explains, "players pushed into the national team find it had to bridge that gap."

The more he speaks, the more familiar seem the stories. No coaches, he says, to teach kids modern drills. Fourteen support staff for the Germans at the World Cup, four for the Indians. No continuity of coaching whereas teams abroad are headed by the same man for years. Simple things. Do-able things. Ignored things. Fixing hockey requires no magic, only intent.

Saddest part

But the saddest part of it all is this. The hockey player, he loves this game. Still. He talks, unprovoked, about hockey's joys, the challenges of quick decisions made at high speed while on tired legs, and his voice quickens with enthusiasm.

What's it like, he is cruelly asked, to play hockey for India knowing you will never win anything substantial, and he replies: "I've never had that belief." If he has a son, he is asked, will he let him pursue hockey, and he says, unequivocally, "yes."

So why is this sad? If anything we should be sustained by his optimistic spirit. We are. But it's sad because young men of such drive, and promise, are being let down, again, and again, by tired old men.

Today the cricket starts, the attention turns. Next time we hear from hockey will be months. Administrators know that, they know how to ride out these brief storms. We move on, but the hockey player has nowhere to go but back to his field of dying dreams.

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