MEN UNITED
There have been player revolts in Indian hockey in the recent past, but none of them were as successful as the one last week because the national team never fought as a group, writes UTHRA GANESAN
ON a humid day in Chennai, back in 1996, the mood in the Indian hockey team preparing for the Atlanta Olympics changed dramatically. India’s main goalkeeper, Ashish Ballal, landed in the city to join the camp, drove to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, and walked out almost immediately. Refusing to stay in the stadium, where the squad were being made to sleep on mattresses on the floor, he checked into a hotel and said he would pay his own way through the camp.
The shaken administration had no choice but to transfer all the players to a hotel in order to avoid embarrassment. But the officials took their revenge in the coming weeks, dropping Ballal from the Olympics squad.
That was the first of the many run-ins Ballal was to have with the Indian Hockey Federation. The last one resulted in him — and six others, including coach MK Kaushik -being sacked after India won the gold medal at the Bangkok Asian Games in 1998. The players had demanded better living conditions and regular match fees, and the administration had decided to not tolerate such insolence.
So when Indian hockey got another shock last week as the players went on a strike, demanding incentives for their performances over the last year, Ballal felt a sense of déjà vu.
“I heard some former players saying that the players should not have gone on strike, and that the timing was wrong. But they did the right thing, at the right time. One day after the World Cup, they could’ve screamed hoarse but no one would’ve heard them. The fact that the World Cup is being held in India made a difference,” he said. “I walked out in 1996 to protest against the poor living conditions. In 1998, I demanded rightful payment after the Asiad gold. Let’s face it, no parent wants an uncertain future for their child. I’m glad that today, finally, the team have managed to stand together for their rights.”
General apathy SPORTSMEN in India aren’t known for voicing their dissent publicly. In fact, the whole system is designed in a way that allows the administration — the national federations, the IOA, and the government departments -to treat players, across sports, as second-class citizens in the hierarchy.
Athletes struggle with the abysmal conditions in stadium dormitories, the boxers continue to stay in nondescript hotels despite their recent achievements, and the plight of the wrestlers, which came to light after Sushil Kumar won an Olympic bronze in Beijing, remains unchanged despite media reports on how bad things are.
Back in 1998, therefore, it wasn’t surprising that the sacking of the key players and the hockey coach did not evoke any great outrage. That was the first real player protest in Indian hockey, and it was crushed ruthlessly, with the six rebels — Ballal, Dhanraj Pillay, Mukesh Kumar, Sabu Varkey, AB Subbaiah and Sandeep Somesh — getting no support from the rest of their team mates.
“There were a lot of negative people in the team. They were more worried about themselves, about their future. We did not have the kind of unity that was seen last week,” said Ballal.
Former coach Kaushik said another factor for the players getting their voices heard was that the interim body, Hockey India, is not as powerful as the former IHF. “Hockey India was under tremendous pressure from many sides. Back in our time, the IHF was far more powerful,” he said. “Finally, the players have got their rights.”
Next protest THE second wave came in 2003-04, when the Indian hockey team, almost out of nowhere, started winning tournament after tournament.
Suddenly, players such as Gagan Ajit Singh and Jugraj Singh started getting recognised. The TV in India was growing, and as their images got flashed across the country, there were offers from sponsors who wanted to cash in on their image.
Gagan and Jugraj were signed up by management firm Percept D’Mark, while Deepak Thakur and Prabhjot Singh were snapped up by Advent, the management arm of Lintas. Suddenly, the hockey players were walking the ramp in fashion shows, there were hoardings and print commercials, and the corporate world was starting to wake up to the marketability of a sport other than cricket.
But suddenly, the bubble burst. Worried about rising player power, the IHF first banned the players from speaking to the media, and then de nied them permission to sign individ ual contracts with corporate houses.
Injuries to key players Jugraj and Thakur at almost the same time made things even more difficult for the team as the wins started to dry up.
“The federation put itself between the players and the sponsors. Anyone who had to come had to be routed though the federation, and get stuck with the officials,” says Thakur, who was one of the most vocal advocates of players’ rights at that time.
“The federation thought players were becoming stars, and that did not go down well with them. Any big sponsor coming in was looking for some kind of assurance that the player would be in action for some – time at least. We had yearly con tracts, but in a setup where one didn’t know if he would even be among the – probables for the next tournament, that was asking for the moon,” Thakur adds. Given the situation, some of the players asked for match fees, and the organisation’s response was to summarily discard them.
Jugraj, who had a near-fatal acci dent before returning to competitive . hockey, says the biggest problem was the lack of unity. “If we had stood up together and had done something like the protest last week, perhaps things would’ve changed in our time itself,” he says. “We got Rs 25,000 per month from Sahara in 2003, but that stopped after the Athens Olympics. There were no audited ac counts, and even now no one knows what happened to all that money,” he says.
Standing together UNITY, in fact, has been the most talked about factor during the recent protest. “I don’t think even the officials expected all 22 of us to stick together till the end,” laughs Thakur.
From the current lot, Thakur and Prabhjot were part of the group that protested in 2004 as well. “Back then, we did not have enough support. We had just come into the squad. There were other senior players and we got little support from them,” he says. “Everyone had his own interests to look at, and so no one wanted to come out in the open against the federation.”
Jugraj adds: “At that time, those who should’ve spoken out didn’t.
Now we are the seniors in the squad.
We’ve seen the bad days, and what harm being divided can do. We realise that if things continue like this, there won’t be a hockey team left 10 years from now. Since we were already branded as people with bad attitudes, we thought why not fight till the end this time.”
But keeping the group together was tougher than it appeared, they say. “Every day, we had to talk to the whole squad, keep them motivated, tell them how important this was for the future of the sport. We feared that someone might succumb to pressure, especially since a number of the players were only beginning their national stints. But I am proud of the youngsters. The officials did everything they could, but we all stayed together,” says Thakur.
The players are aware, however, that this was only the beginning of their protest, not the end. “We did what we thought was right. I hope this incident puts hockey back into the national consciousness. We have the World Cup at home, the Commonwealth Games, and then the Asian Games,” he says.
“This is a very important year for Indian hockey on the field. Hopefully, people running the sport will make it an equally important time off the field.”