K. ARUMUGAM

TRIVIA: MP Ganesh is the eighth hockey player to pen an autobiography

“With hope in my heart and trust in God, I ran away from home to Jabalpur with Rs.25 as the allowance in hand…” This is what Olympian MP Ganesh, who captained India at the 1973 World Cup, states in the opening chapters of his just-released autobiography.

How the runaway boy turned out to be one of the leading lights of Indian hockey is the essence of the painstaking effort: ‘My Autobiography, Living the Dream.’

The work is most welcome as it comes at a time that our Indian hockey bookshelf is starved of a reasonable stock of literature. It is therefore an opportunity for sports followers in general and hockey fans in particular to reminisce the recent past.

The book is perfectly timed, as the runaway boy was also a vital cog in the 1972 Olympic team that brought the country a bronze medal almost 50 summers ago in Munich. Any reminiscence of the glorious past on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics is topical. Expectedly, one of the 25 chapters, ‘Surviving the Munich Massacre’ makes interesting reading.

Many feel the 1973 World Cup team was the best team that did not win a title! As a young captain, Ganesh endorses this view in the book. He in fact dwells on the events that led the team down at a crucial moment, especially in the final against The Netherlands when some of his senior teammates lacked team spirit. The chapter ‘Tryst with Destiny’ is the quintessence of the book, which may ignite debate in days to come. Or, at the very least we will have heard it from the horse’s mouth thereby accentuating our long held belief.

MP Ganesh’s role in his team’s rise in the Army Supply Corps (ASC), playing for Italy’s Levante Hockey Club at the request of his diamond-merchant player, the transformation from a player to coach, and then to administration and other aspects in his career makes good reading.

‘Living the Dream’ thus sheds light on events in Indian hockey for five full decades — from late 1960s to the recent past.

Naturally, his long association with hockey saw many historical moments unfold in front of his eyes or those that involved him. Personal anecdotes are aplenty. For instance, how he defied the IHF’s alleged wish to drop Dhanraj Pillay for the 1998 Asian Games on the issue of player discipline renders insights as to how historical victories were worked out from behind the scenes.

This is a sleekly produced and lucidly written work. However, production and positioning of  images, all important and significant, is run of the mill stuff.

Ganesh represented India twice at the Asian Games and World Cup besides the 1972 Munich Olympics. He trained the Indian team in the late 1980s, and as head of the Bengaluru chapter of the Sports Authority of India, oversaw the training of many national teams.

Therefore, ‘Living the Dream’ is a lively account of about 50 years of Indian hockey from the perspective of a successful player, coach and administrator, all rolled into one. The book deserves pride of place in your collection.

Title: My Autobiography. Living the Dream by Dr. MP Ganesh with Srividhya and SS Sreekumar
Book: Paperpack
Pages: 148
Price: Rs.350
Published by Notion Press Media Pvt Ltd.
Available at www.notionpress.com and Amazon

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