3
How low would we go?
Posted by the lazy knight
on
9:40 AM
Normally known for its upfront and uninhibited marketing methods, the Times of India had in a rare show of finesse and subtlety come out with a beautiful advertisement campaign for its print edition the last year. Emphasizing, its tagline of 'A day in the life of India', the advertisement showed a neighborhood crowd joyously celebrating the selection of their local lad in the Indian hockey team. When the news was communicated to the boy's grandfather, the old man simply picked up the copy of the Times carrying the news of the selection along with his reading glasses and quietly slipped in to his corner of the house. There, opening his trunk, the grandfather took out a copy of a sepia tinted edition of the Times - one that carried the headline of his being dropped from the Indian camp and superimposed the present day one upon that. A little jig to the faint tune of the bands playing in the courtyard outside followed, thus capturing an era between the dropping of one generation of a family and its redemption by another simply in the space of two newspaper headlines.
Why this reference to the Times on a freezing Delhi winter morning? Because, if you are a hockey fan like I am, you would really wish that the Times could apply some of its marketing brains to Indian hockey and bring it some sort of redemption. But alas, if wishes were horses...and marketing whiz kids don’t play sport, they only sell it. For Indian hockey, which returned empty handed from the Doha Asian games, redemption for its string of disappoints is nowhere in sight. Its fall from the glory days of the previous century to the barren state of today could well fit the Times tagline quoted above. But those who love Indian hockey, these have been long, unending and painfully dark days. Days spent watching a sport from a pedestal that seemed destined to be occupied by it for posterity. Days spent watching standards slip, others outpacing us, taunting and mocking us as we stumbled, slowed and eventually fell in the global race for success. It’s been a bit like watching an empire collapse, brick by brick, province by province – its king and people desperately unable to do anything against the approaching aggressor or the self-destructing monster within. It’s been akin to watching a company go down, years of toil and effort of those who built it now being put to the stake by the brutal hammer of a liquidator.
If Indian hockey was a corporate enterprise, it most definitely would have filed for insolvency with the BIFR today. Its seems completely bereft of any ideas to resurrect the game and attract the best of the young talents to it and despite all the good intentions its mandarins profess they possess towards the game; the suicidal decisions just do not seem to stop. So who is to blame? The administrators who took success for granted when the gold medals flowed and forgot that the game was changing the world over and we needed to change along with it? Or the current crop of rulers of the game, who simply do not want the attention to be focused away from them to the players and thus keep clipping the wings of any one who asserts his presence on the hockey scene by the dint of his performance? Or the government which turns a sleepy eye to what it calls the national game? Or the players who experts claim lack pride and application?
Maybe they all do and then maybe above all of them it is we with whom the fault lies. We, the followers, who just don’t love the game the enough to demand a change. We, the public, who can stone the homes of cricketers and condemn the coach in parliament for one bad overseas defeat or one stray remark, but just don’t care about the shenanigans that go on in hockey. Do we really bother about our national game? Do we even give a damn about the disgrace its present state brings upon us a sporting nation?
No sport can survive for long with a losing team and a non-existent domestic structure. The Indian cricket team may lose on the international stage, but is the unheralded domestic competition tournament, the Ranji Trophy that will sustain it through tough times. Its level of competition may not be up to the international standards, but is the spine that keeps Indian cricket erect. It is a platform for young talent, for seven months of the year it provides competitive action to a large pool of aspiring hopefuls. Just its presence on the national scale ensures the reach of the game, propelled manifold by the exposure that television provides to the international games. If a young lad in the interiors of India wants to emulate a Dhoni whom he sees on his TV set, then the Ranji trophy exists to provide a vehicle for his dreams.
But what of hockey? Where is the structure? Barring a few tournaments organized by welfare trusts and charitable societies, there is no national competition to speak of. The National Championships have not been held for many years. The under 19 and other sub junior tournaments are also conducted by non- IHF bodies. The Federation simply uses these events to pick players and judge their form. And the circus of the Premier Hockey League will attract crowds, bring in money for the television channel that markets it but will do little to make the game healthy. For it is supposed to be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. Being the twenty twenty version of hockey, it simply cannot replace the original game where basics are honed, mistakes spotted and corrections made. It organizes teams on a basis of convenience, there is no spectator loyalty to arouse passions and it lasts barely a month. All major and successful hockey playing countries today have a professional club culture in place with leagues that continue throughout the year. But the word professional is an anathema to those who run India hockey; the winds of change that touched the Indian economy a decade and half back and brought an air of competitiveness to it have not touched Indian sports. Indian hockey administration has forgotten that in the globally competitive environment unless you change you perish – and Indian hockey is well down the road. The longer the team fails, the more the interest will wane and with no domestic structure to back it up the game will die, its demise accelerated by rulers who are too blinded by their arrogance to see the crumbling walls collapsing on them.
India’s last international success came three years ago at the Asia Cup; the talented squad which could have been a force at the Olympics was wrecked by an administration hell bent on showing the players their place. In any other sport, the heroes who win are feted. In Indian hockey they are booted out of the team. The nucleus of that last successful squad has been torn to shreds; its protagonists wander in the wilderness. Indian was out of the world stage long time ago, now we are out of the Asian stage as well. The next humiliation will be the non-qualification to the Olympics. The Indians need to win at least one of the three qualifying tournaments which will have the mid-level world teams and going by their form and the ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ methods of their rulers the Indian hockey team stands as good a chance as a turtle of winning an Olympic sprint. The funeral may take place then but the last rites have already begun.
Why this reference to the Times on a freezing Delhi winter morning? Because, if you are a hockey fan like I am, you would really wish that the Times could apply some of its marketing brains to Indian hockey and bring it some sort of redemption. But alas, if wishes were horses...and marketing whiz kids don’t play sport, they only sell it. For Indian hockey, which returned empty handed from the Doha Asian games, redemption for its string of disappoints is nowhere in sight. Its fall from the glory days of the previous century to the barren state of today could well fit the Times tagline quoted above. But those who love Indian hockey, these have been long, unending and painfully dark days. Days spent watching a sport from a pedestal that seemed destined to be occupied by it for posterity. Days spent watching standards slip, others outpacing us, taunting and mocking us as we stumbled, slowed and eventually fell in the global race for success. It’s been a bit like watching an empire collapse, brick by brick, province by province – its king and people desperately unable to do anything against the approaching aggressor or the self-destructing monster within. It’s been akin to watching a company go down, years of toil and effort of those who built it now being put to the stake by the brutal hammer of a liquidator.
If Indian hockey was a corporate enterprise, it most definitely would have filed for insolvency with the BIFR today. Its seems completely bereft of any ideas to resurrect the game and attract the best of the young talents to it and despite all the good intentions its mandarins profess they possess towards the game; the suicidal decisions just do not seem to stop. So who is to blame? The administrators who took success for granted when the gold medals flowed and forgot that the game was changing the world over and we needed to change along with it? Or the current crop of rulers of the game, who simply do not want the attention to be focused away from them to the players and thus keep clipping the wings of any one who asserts his presence on the hockey scene by the dint of his performance? Or the government which turns a sleepy eye to what it calls the national game? Or the players who experts claim lack pride and application?
Maybe they all do and then maybe above all of them it is we with whom the fault lies. We, the followers, who just don’t love the game the enough to demand a change. We, the public, who can stone the homes of cricketers and condemn the coach in parliament for one bad overseas defeat or one stray remark, but just don’t care about the shenanigans that go on in hockey. Do we really bother about our national game? Do we even give a damn about the disgrace its present state brings upon us a sporting nation?
No sport can survive for long with a losing team and a non-existent domestic structure. The Indian cricket team may lose on the international stage, but is the unheralded domestic competition tournament, the Ranji Trophy that will sustain it through tough times. Its level of competition may not be up to the international standards, but is the spine that keeps Indian cricket erect. It is a platform for young talent, for seven months of the year it provides competitive action to a large pool of aspiring hopefuls. Just its presence on the national scale ensures the reach of the game, propelled manifold by the exposure that television provides to the international games. If a young lad in the interiors of India wants to emulate a Dhoni whom he sees on his TV set, then the Ranji trophy exists to provide a vehicle for his dreams.
But what of hockey? Where is the structure? Barring a few tournaments organized by welfare trusts and charitable societies, there is no national competition to speak of. The National Championships have not been held for many years. The under 19 and other sub junior tournaments are also conducted by non- IHF bodies. The Federation simply uses these events to pick players and judge their form. And the circus of the Premier Hockey League will attract crowds, bring in money for the television channel that markets it but will do little to make the game healthy. For it is supposed to be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. Being the twenty twenty version of hockey, it simply cannot replace the original game where basics are honed, mistakes spotted and corrections made. It organizes teams on a basis of convenience, there is no spectator loyalty to arouse passions and it lasts barely a month. All major and successful hockey playing countries today have a professional club culture in place with leagues that continue throughout the year. But the word professional is an anathema to those who run India hockey; the winds of change that touched the Indian economy a decade and half back and brought an air of competitiveness to it have not touched Indian sports. Indian hockey administration has forgotten that in the globally competitive environment unless you change you perish – and Indian hockey is well down the road. The longer the team fails, the more the interest will wane and with no domestic structure to back it up the game will die, its demise accelerated by rulers who are too blinded by their arrogance to see the crumbling walls collapsing on them.
India’s last international success came three years ago at the Asia Cup; the talented squad which could have been a force at the Olympics was wrecked by an administration hell bent on showing the players their place. In any other sport, the heroes who win are feted. In Indian hockey they are booted out of the team. The nucleus of that last successful squad has been torn to shreds; its protagonists wander in the wilderness. Indian was out of the world stage long time ago, now we are out of the Asian stage as well. The next humiliation will be the non-qualification to the Olympics. The Indians need to win at least one of the three qualifying tournaments which will have the mid-level world teams and going by their form and the ‘shoot yourself in the foot’ methods of their rulers the Indian hockey team stands as good a chance as a turtle of winning an Olympic sprint. The funeral may take place then but the last rites have already begun.
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