Delhi doesn’t look like a Hockey World Cup venue

During the 1982 World Cup, Mumbai’s hockey fans could not have missed the sight of a sizeable bunch of Namdhari Sikh boys in their all-white attire at every game. They had been sent there all the way from their base in Punjab on a learning tour by their hockey-loving spiritual head.

A Namdhari team had already begun making its presence count in the country’s hockey scene, and the Sadguru Sahib saw the Mumbai tournament as a not-to-be-missed opportunity for their boys.

Now that, 28 years later, the World Cup has returned to India, one would like to see the Namdhari example being multiplied many times over in Delhi. But, from the look of things, that does not seem likely at all. There are several reasons, the most frustrating of these being ‘no-one knows where to get a ticket’ in the good old Major Dhyan Chand Stadium, now said to have been transformed into hockey’s most modern venue.

Also, this is hardly the right time for an event like a World Cup from the school-going population’s viewpoint: This is examination time. The 1982 Mumbai World Cup was staged in the lesser worrisome month of January.

Be that as it may, Pargat Singh, former India captain and fullback and now director of Punjab’s sports department, confided that he had planned to bring two-three hundred of his state’s children to watch the games in Delhi, but he had no clue where and how to arrange tickets for them. Where, weeks and months ahead of the Cup, there should have been a burning fever for the event, what we are finding, regrettably, is that the enthusiasm for hockey is being doused, complains the former hockey icon.

So low-key is the publicity for the event that, on chancing to see a TV ad showing actress Priyanka Chopra plucking a hockey stick and asking you over to the cheer your team, a viewer asked, ‘Kahan ho raha hai, aur kab?’ (Where is the World Cup and when?).

Delhi hardly looks like a World Cup-hosting metropolis. More people are talking about the coming football World Cup and even the English and European leagues, and even the cricket World Cup which is still a long way ahead.

One would have thought, exams or no exams, groups of youths from Delhi’s neighbouring states at least would make it to the Capital this spring.