Sunil’s Facebook faces hockey players dilemma, kabhi on kabhi off

Even as Indian hockey probables started leaving their cities for a common convergence at Patiala – national camp has just commenced there — www.stick2hockey.com has caught up with SV Sunil and SK Uthappa, to let us refresh our memories and also to reach out to ‘Days After London’.

“Nobody plays to lose, undoubtedly!” starts SV Sunil with a familiar refrain.

“It seems we reached our peak performance before hand. During the Olympics, our game was on downhill.”

SV Sunil, being on the never-forging circuit for over six years by now is oblivious of the fact that the players are the soft-targets of hockey fans at such calamity as London.

They face personal agony, come under constant stress, and face full-blast criticism. All these can be too difficult to absorb.

No wonder, Sunil had his share of this. He often heard, ‘You should stop playing hockey.

He heard here in Bangalore the same from someone in the stands.

How did he react to this? Very interesting. He put himself into the crysallis of oblivion, and for that deleted his facebook account. Because, he can no longer bear all these.

SK Uthappa, the youngest of the London squad, had an eye-opening outing there. He feels International Hockey is had and shoulder above the our domestic hockey. Regretting painfully he says, “We were punished hard for each mistake we committed in London”.

A hardcore Chelsea fan, and a keen gaming enthusiast, Uthappa, is a gamewise more wise now, when he asserts “We don’t need excessive running and dodging at the international level.”

“International hockey is fairly aggressive, one needs to know how to do man-to-man mark and also how to beat when others mark you. You can’t be soft out there. I will be working on both of these aspects at the camp,” observes Uthappa.

As the Indian Men’s team prepares for over a month before they leave for Super Series Hockey 9’s in Australia, followed by Champions Trophy in Melbourne and Asian Champions Trophy in Qatar, can they smooth the roughened feeling of the hockey nation?

This quesiton was posed to both

“We need to keep working hard, keep the belief in ourselves, no matter what happens,” says Uthappa.

Contrastingly, Sunil — who has missed important events like Commonwealth Games, World Cup and Asian Games in two summers ago, knows how to grab opportunity that comes his way.

Both the players, invariably, highlight the importance of hockey fans in their lives. Whereas Uthappa is shy on attention – even refusing autographs — and empathetic towards the feelings of the fan, SV Sunil recollects with moist-eyes when a fan called out to him and said, “India has got its second Mukesh Kumar.”

And in the end, as Uthappa starts to leave, a fan walks past him, with a take on Olympics. “Hi Uthappa…you all – you, Sardara and the whole team – played very well. It just didn’t work out. It was a bad tournament. Good luck for the upcoming tournaments,” he remarks beamingly.

For both Sunil and Uthappa, the writing on the wall is clear: Fresh camp is coming up; new avenues are on the way and that you have leave the past where it belongs to.

Fans and players are moving forward. And may be, it’s time for others to move on too.

And symbolic it may sound but recently Sunil has activated his facebook account again.