Shifting CT: India pays for its collective sin

Every National Sports Federation in India is headed by at least a Minister or a leading public figure. We are not happy about that but at least they are sensitive to public mood and opinion. However, in the last 50-year hockey, hockey never had even had such minimal respectability. It had always been headed by a retired or serving bureaucrat or provincial Police Chief. Therefore, perhaps, hockey sport was never had leadership which can steer it to success by vision or mission.

That the sport is run by petty persons has been a bane, and its results are now showing up.

The FIH has today announced officially shifting of men’s Champions Trophy, which it generously gifted last year, to some other bidder, and everyone know that is New Zealand.

It is better to see for ourselves what has led to this development rather than finding fault with the donor.

It is pity that India is itself to blame for the whole unavoidable shifting — the shame that goes with it for a country which still claims hockey is its national game.

India’s all problem started when India failed to get a Olympic place with a poor performance in 2006 Asian Games. However, the FIH, like anybody who knows hockey, long before felt that India hockey is slipping along the road and the sport will soon fade into oblivion. They came out with a solution.

They introduced what is called Promoting Indian Hockey Project. They brought money from International Olympic Committee, convinced Ric Charlesworth to work in India. These were really big steps for a global organization to think of re-invigorating a particular country. The FIH headed by Els van Breda Vriesman had that vision. They expected India will fare badly on the turf and wanted to help. Remember they put in place Promoting Indian Hockey Project well before we came fifth in the 2006 Asiad and two years before we failed to qualify for the Olympics. They had foreseen such things, but India right through cold-shouldered their warm hand.

Then IHF Chief KPS Gill did not respect the agreement he himself signed with the FIH with respect to this project. Ric Charleworth was treated badly in India both by KPS Gill and his confident Joaquim Carvalho, who arrogated himself as the better stuff than the Australian legend. Ric was not allowed to interact with the national team, and shortly he left for his own good.

After India failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympics for the first time in its 80-year history, public opinion saw dissolution of KPS Gill’s IHF, but emergence of another set of coterie in the name of Ad-hoc Committee and then all of a sudden a new organization called Hockey India, did not bring any fresh air to the administration.

A business scion wanted to become the president of IHF, he had the numbers, but an inexplicable collusion between Indian Olympic Association and the FIH frustrated him. Had only election held in time for the IHF, that is within six months of dissolution of IHF, today we will not be in a position in which we are.

Of course the FIH cannot say its hands are clean with respect to formation of third organization beyond Indian Hockey Federation and Indian Women Hockey Federation. Its stubborn, biased and unilateral support to the new body, and selective amnesia on IHF and IWHF, added another dimension in the courts of law and in the another arbitrator, the Ministry of Sports.

So, in a nutshell, India could not show to the world who rule its hockey. Is it not ridiculous?

Meanwhile a television company, Neo Sports, came into the picture. The same IHF which in its 14-years of misrule hardly bothered about Nationals, started organizing not only the Nationals, but also long forgotten Federation Cup etc, just to show it is alive and kicking. Neo Sports announced World Series Hockey under the patronage of IHF. It contracted players world over, paid them installments of money, and it obviously cut the FIH’s prestige. Now the warfront changed. The TV Company threatened to take FIH to international courts which none in the 120-year history of FIH ventured into.

Government’s effort to strike a balance between IHF and HI seemed to be the last nail in the coffin. A month ago, IHF and HI signed a informal merger, very ambiguous and impractical one, which gave much to IHF while undermined the authority of HI.

Had only the IHF and HI has been headed by people of stature, people of vision, things would not have slipped to this nasty level. Every unit in India, at city level or village level is a divided house now. I saw for myself in Puducherry, a tiny unit, at least six groups claiming they are true guardians of hockey.

I wrote once, I don’t hesitate to do it once more. Both HI and IHF cannot on their own even gift an Indian team a pair of shoes. They have nothing to offer. They only cycle and recycle governments’ funds. They don’t own stadium, they don’t run camps, they don’t purchase air-tickets for Indian tours, and that’s why you have parasites, sick-minded goons, silly-minded low level govt or bank employees run hockey now. I don’t know what credentials Mr. Shetty has so as to head the IHF. He is basically organizer of bhajans and kirtans. On the other side, we never know who is this Aleyamma who head HI.

The point is, hockey is run by people of mediocre order. So, they don’t have it in them to run it the way it should be. They even don’t know the extent harm they been inflicting on hockey by their incompetency and lack of vision.

So. We never qualified for the Champions Trophy on merit after 1995. Yes we had participated many times because either we hosted it or some country backed out. We continue to remain so.

Never again blame nobody else except yourself for what is happening now.