K. ARUMUGAM

It’s Olympic time! And, once again, Indian field hockey is under the scanner. The cliché, question and doubt — I don’t see any difference between them – is whether Indian hockey will regain its past glory.

Glory? Yes, an entity that existed decades and decades ago. It’s not just the remote past now, but passe.

You don’t try to regain glory for four decades. If it’s so, as has been happening with Indian men’s hockey, you have to forget the accolades of the past and start anew.

Indian hockey at present, despite a citizen heading the International Hockey Federation (FIH), is desperately in search of its identity. If the sport has to survive, it has to deliver, meaning by which India has to be among the medallists in global major events including the Olympics and the World Cup.

Hockey may be referred to as the India’s National Game. It even celebrates National Sports Day on the birth anniversary of the Wizard Dhyan Chand, the maestro commonly called the greatest player of all time after whom an iconic stadium in New Delhi is named.

Indian men’s hockey team has an onerous task at Tokyo

These are all gestures to salute the past. But the past cannot be a label of the present.

What then is hockey’s present?

For one thing, none of its premier domestic events, the National Championships or any international engagements, have been held in the top five cities of the country in the last decade.

Despite laudable efforts and deep-rooted passion for the game, the big picture is that the game is less visible. And, despairingly, far from inspiring or captivating the imagination of the young generation.

A photographer next to me asked, “which team is this?” while taking position to shoot the Indian men’s and women’s hockey teams’ group photo at the Indira Gandhi International terminal the other day!

Don’t fault him.

Another instance of the hockey’s nearly incognito status: We were waiting for the results of our Covid tests at the Narita Airport Testing facility. At the washroom in the vicinity, I exchanged greetings with the men’s and women’s hockey teams as our paths crossed. “Who are they?” asked another journalist accompanying me! I replied, saying they were the hockey teams. He was visibly wonderstruck. “You even know the hockey players?”, he replied. His tone revealed amazement for my microscopic knowledge of knowing hockey players!

What happened in Delhi while leaving and arriving here, gives a clear picture where hockey stands, if indeed it’s standing at all.

It’s reality that our “National Game” is just another sport and it has to survive among the others if it wants to claim its space in the contemporary scene.

Indian hockey is overburnded with the weight of history

And another pertinent point: Delhi Police has put up posters to publicise and cheer the Indian Olympic contingent all along the road leading to the T3 terminal at IGI Airport. Catching the eye are colourful images of the archers, badminton stars, wrestlers and boxers but there’s no representation of a hockey player!

No. Please don’t fault Delhi Police. Don’t fault the graphic designer and don’t fault the artist. It is what it is. Stark reality. How hockey has come to be a little or nearly unknown entity.

Participating in the Olympic Games without a presence on the podium for the last 40 years has eroded the sport’s image. Hockey was left in a vacuum after the 1980 Moscow Olympic gold medal victory. After one Olympic disappointment was followed by another, both the public and aficionado sought an alternative.

It happened in 2008.

It was a landmark year for India at the Games. In Beijing, two things happened with respect to Indian sports. Firstly, India did not qualify for the hockey events. Secondly, the vacuum, happily, was duly filled.

A 57-member contingent travelled to the Chinese capital. On 11 August 2008, Abhinav Bindra won the gold medal in the men’s 10m air rifle, becoming the first ever individual gold medallist for India. Wrestler Sushil Kumar won a bronze medal. Vijender Singh won the country’s first-ever Olympic medal in boxing. Three medals at the Games was India’s best effort till then.

Indian sport has since come a long way. Olympic medals started coming in from other sports. What was thought as exceptional — Leander Paes’ (tennis) and Karnam Maleswari’s (weightlifting) bronze and Rajyavardhan Singh Ratore’s (shooting) silver — have now become the norm.

Big names in today’s sports hail from a huge pool (shooting, boxing, wrestling, badminton etc). Hockey’s monopoly no longer exists.

International hockey desperately needs India. But for the game to survive in India itself, it has to re-invent itself and the right start would be winning a medal at the Olympics or the World Cup. The only way to build an identity all over again.