A short, frail lad packed awesome power into his reverse hits and drag flicks during the Deccan Herald Super Division hockey league in Bangalore four years ago.
Playing as a linkman for Centre of Excellence (CoE), whenever Arjun Halappa slithered into the shooting zone or stepped up for the penalty corner executions, some vicious hits thundered goalward. Most of them rattled the nylons or crashed onto the boards. The others, by a strange stroke of luck found the goalkeepers come in the way. The startling performances triggered whispers in the galleries of the Karnataka State Hockey Association (KSHA) as well as outside it, that here was definite national team material.

Unfortunately, Halappa’s diminutive frame almost always snapped one out of the reverie that such talks led to. ‘If not for his physique, he would have been in the national team,’ said a few. ‘ I think his height is a disadvantage,’ said others. Fortunately, such chatter were restricted to the stadium stands. Had it filtered down to the 19-year-old, he sure would have crumbled under the sheer weight of negativism.

Although, Halappa would have himself harboured such fears deep down, he would have been more deeply affected had it come at him from the outside. Saved from such debilitating talk, Halappa continued to unleash some astounding foreceful hits from that small frame of his in the local league. Even as his performance crept up to the outstanding mark in the league graph, it was clear that if the KSHA stadium turf was to be the only stage for Halappa’s talent to be displayed on, it would be a sheer waste of talent.

The young Coorg player had proved that he had the stuff to parade himself on a bigger platform. And just when the whispers in the galleries veered towards the fatalistic that another Karnataka talent would fail to make the grade came the call-up to the junior Indian team. Coach C. R. Kumar, who initiated the process of building the core group of the junior outfit that went onto win gold at the World Cup in Hobart in 2001, included Halappa in his list of probables. The whispers of doubt which emanated in the KSHA galleries then began to fade and were certainly headed towards silence, as Halappa’s display with the junior team in two international outings in late 1999 and early 2000 emphatically proved that the alleged disadvantage in physique would no more be so.

A 7-Nation Junior Challenge Cup in Poland and the Junior Asia Cup in Kuala Lumpur proved Halappa’s readiness for the international stage. Eight goals in the junior Asia Cup proved that his skill and hockey acumen more than made up for the perceived disadvantage. The next time Halappa made his entry onto the pitch of the KSHA stadium, in the green shirts of Canara Bank, a team he had now signed up with following employment, all that could be heard from the galleries were applause and sighs of pleasure as he riddled holes in rival defences with even more ease. And those cruel whispers had by now died a silent death.

With the demise of those horrid ghosts, the curtain lifted on Halappa’s career. The year 2001 was to be one his most memorable ones. “It was a great year,” he was to say later. A new dawn seemed to be sweeping across Indian hockey as coach Cedric D’ Souza took over the reigns. Halappa found a place in the Mumbai man’s scheme of things and the 9-Nation Prime Minister’s Cup in Dhaka saw the Karnataka youngster making his first outing with the national team. It was truly memorable. India put it across Pakistan in the tie-breakers in the final to emerge triumphant.

Then came the World Cup qualifiers in Edinburgh in August that year. India struggled throughout the tournament, but sealed their berth for the Kuala Lumpur World Cup. Halappa knocked in a few goals of his own as he helped coach D’Souza’s men make the breakthrough. Halappa was now well on his way to securing his international career with the senior team. A little stopover needed to be made before he could get back on the road with the seniors. The junior World Cup in October in Hobart beckoned.

As the record books validate, the Indian juniors carved out an unforgettable victory lifting the World Cup for the first ever time. The seniors had done it at Kuala Lumpur in 1975 and now the juniors had their own share of glory. Halappa’s utility as a linkman finally came to the fore. Halappa contributed to another part of Indian hockey history as the Indians won the inaugural Champions Challenge tournament in Kuala Lumpur in December 2001. It earned the team a ticket to the Champions Trophy in 2002. While that was a big feather in Halappa’s cap, what was a definitive moment for the Karnataka youngster was his inclusion in the World Cup team in 2002. It was the pinnacle of his hockey career. The simple joy that he had experienced when he put stick to ball as a seventh standard schoolboy in Sowmwarpet in Coorg district of Karnataka, had grown into a deep passion and had cu