FORMER STARS HOLD FORTH

A valuable lesson in hockey

India’s Presence Will Be Missed In This Year’s Olympics

Bangalore: For years, Indian hockey remained in the Olympic spectrum. India’s hegemony in the quadrennial event needs no reminders. However, 28 years since their last Olympic gold in Moscow, Indian hockey ’s epitaph was written on a March evening in Chile earlier this year.

India dished out a terrible show on that fateful day to surrender the crunch game in an Olympic qualifying tournament final. Ironically, it was Great Britain who stood between India and an Olympic berth, the same opponents who famously played truant during our pre-independent era — to avoid humiliation!

A lot of murky water has flown under the bridge after the Chile debacle. There is a consensus that the state of affairs of the sport in the country has hit rock bottom.

Nevertheless, our stupendous Olympic record of eight gold has and will continue to inspire the Indians, be it in the suburbs of Chandigarh or a remote village down south in Coorg.

V Baskaran, captain of the gold-winning team in the 1980 Moscow Games and coach in both the 2000 and 2004 editions, recalled one such moment. “I saw a five-minute clipping on the 1964 Olympics in a movie hall and that truly inspired me as a sportsman,” said Bhaskaran.

When asked about India’s absence this time around, Baskaran said: “I feel sad. More so because I was the coach when India lost the chance to clinch the Olympic berth at the Asian Games itself — losing to lowly China.”

“Hockey will wear a depleted look as many weak teams have made the cut this time,” the former coach noted.

Likewise, drag-flicker Sandeep Singh too believes that the Olympic stage is incomparable. “Whatever you do in any other tournament, people will forget you quickly. But that is not the case with Olympics and if you do well, you will be famous forever.”

Sandeep revealed that he was ‘embarrassed’ during a recent trip to Malaysia when a few locals were surprised to hear about India’s absence in the Olympics. “They couldn’t believe that India didn’t make the Beijing Games. When they asked the reason, I was struggling for answers,” said
Sandeep.

Nobody else could have undergone more trauma than the players who were there in Chile on that fateful March day in March. Then Indian captain Prabodh Tirkey was inconsolable and television images of him breaking down after the defeat were flashed across as the national game was despised as a national shame.

“It was an extremely bad period. All the players hardly spoke anything because it was hard to digest that we couldn’t make it to the Olympics. Believe me, were still in a state of shock.”

“It is unfortunate that we are not there and I believe other teams will miss India very much,” four-time Olympian Dhanraj Pillay reasoned. “The event will miss the Indian style, which is more spectator-friendly and more artistic.”

However, many feel that such a bitter experience was the need of the hour and the only way for a revival. Olympian M P Ganesh is one of them.

“It is actually good for the game in the sense that it has taught us a valuable lesson. I believe the aim should be to perform well in big stages like Olympics rather than finish somewhere at the bottom.”

“The debacle is purely due to poor management of the sport and not because of lack of talent,” said Ganesh, who finished on the podium (bronze) in his only Olympic appearance in the 1972 Munich edition.

A revival is not impossible provided the system undergoes a major change.

“The planning for the London Olympics should not start after three years but right now,” stated Baskaran.