Who remembers this day?

38 summers ago this day turned out to be a red-lettered day in the Indian sports. A team prepared under patronage of a State government – it was due to internal feud between two factions of Indian Hockey Federation, a familiar affair even nowadays – a low key team that lost to a Pan-American team in the pool shrugged off its lethargy in time and went on to win the World Cup, defeating two Asian giants, one in the semis others in the final.

On its way it had to defeat reigning Olympic Champions in the pool and the team that it won the final was the defending champions.

Indian hockey, a great survivalist, won the 1975 World Cup in Malaysia where at present Sultan Azlan Shah Cup is being staged.

A substitute to Micahel Kindo, Aslam Sher Khan’s 65th minute penalty corner stunner that brought Malaysian semis 2-2 to full time and then how the incomparable left winger Harcharan Singh on his own struck the winner in the extra time to take India to the final, and then in the final how a shot that Ashok Kumar unleashed hit the board and returned in quicksilver fashion catching umpire K. Vijiyanathan — then the organizing secretary of the World Cup itself — a split second delay to understand what had happened before his watchful eyes before doing what he was expected of – whistling for the goal – which ultimately turned out to be winner and the like are stuff of the march 15 1975 final, veritable folkfore stuff, but, are we Indians anymore interested in all these?

In this social media times, where original stuff is subjected to ‘copy and paste’ torture from content, concept and images to everything, creating peak of plagiarism each passing day, we take pride in wishing those 16 players who brought laurels to the country – and reminding others of this important day, with a sad note that none of the print media put out a single line on this only World Cup victory.

We also observe neither do Hockey India nor Indian Hockey Federation, who fight over 5 years to claim their ‘rightful’ legal status as hockey’s guardians, take note of this historic day and did anything in commemoration thereof.

We are happy that at least one World Cup 1975 hero, Brig HJS Chimni, is doing something on hockey today.

He is Organizing Secretary of the ongoing Maharaja Ranjit Singh Cup tournament, whose semifinals will be held today.

Unless a nation remembers and takes lesson from its past glory, there is no way we will have a pride in being worthy citizen.