Green Light

While the IPL-Pakistan controversy is yet to die down, the hockey team is hard at work preparing for a high-profile trip to India for the FIH World Cup. Can the four-time winners, struggling with form, beat the pressure and turn on the style?
South Africa take on Spain in the opener on February 28; Australia and England, with no traditional rivalry on the hockey turf, square off next on the same evening: but for 1.3 billion people on either side of the Radcliffe Line, the FIH Hockey World Cup 2010 will begin only at 2035hrs IST, when India and Pakistan stride out under the floodlights at the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium in Delhi.

India-Pakistan contests, irrespective of the sport or the venue, tend to be high-profile. When the drama is played out in one of the two countries, the pressure increases enough to intimidate even the best. But even judged against the lofty standards set in the past, the circumstances surrounding this visit will mean the spotlight will shine even more harshly than usual on the Zeeshan Ashraf-led side.

Sporting relations between India and Pakistan, which broke down completely after the terror attacks on Mumbai in 2008, took a further hit recently when the Indian Premier League controversially left out all Pakistan cricketers after lining them up for the auction. That issue snowballed into a political row, which, among many other things, saw the Pakistan sports minister call for their hockey team to boycott the World Cup as retaliation (adding a new dimension to talk of hockey suffering because of cricket).

Pride hurt, but common sense intact, the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) ignored the demands and decided to send the team as scheduled. The team’s coach admits that there will be added responsibility on the team under the circumstances. “Wherever we go in the world, we travel as ambassadors of the country,” Shahid Ali Khan, coach of the Pakistan team, told The Sunday Express. “But when you travel to India, there is something extra.” Shahid, who has had his share of experience as a player at the National Stadium during the 1982 Asian Games, insists that politics and sport should not be mixed — something that former India captain Viren Rasquinha agrees with. “I am glad that the Pakistan team will be playing here. If not, it would have been the fans’ loss and it would have been hockey’s loss.”

MORE THAN JUST PR

For Pakistan hockey, this tournament is more than just a public relations visit though. When Indian hockey went into terminal decline a few decades ago, Pakistan continued to flourish.

But with talk of the downfall of India hockey dominating across the fraternity, what easily slips out of mind is how Pakistan hockey has declined, and how fast. Four-time World Cup champions — the most by any country — the Green Shirts last won the tournament in 1994, the same year they lifted the Champions Trophy.

Just two years later, they finished sixth at the Atlanta Olympics, and in another two, they surrendered their world crown in Utrecht, Netherlands. Hope flickered briefly in Sydney when Sohail Abbas guided the team into the semi-finals, but they lost at that stage to South Korea and then to Australia in the third-place playoff. By the time Beijing came along, they had slipped down to eighth place — their worst finish ever at the Games.

For the team, this World Cup is the first big test for a squad that is undergoing a rebuilding process after the lows in Beijing and the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup that followed, where they finished fourth.

“I took over eight months back and we have been rebuilding the squad. We recalled some senior players such as Sohail Abbas, Rehan Butt, Waseem Ahmad and Salman Akbar. We have the right mix of youth and experience and, if we play to our potential, God willing, we can make it to the last four,” Shahid says.

BIG PROBLEMS

Not everyone back in Pakistan shares that optimism though. Pakistan’s recent run, in the Asia Cup (second), the World Cup qualifiers (first) and the Champions Challenge (second), may have been promising, but Sardar Khan, a Karachi-based hockey commentator, who has followed the team for over three decades, feels not too much can be read into them.

“Pakistan need a miracle to make the semis, and I don’t see that happening,” says Khan, the author of Glory and Agony of Pakistan Hockey, a book that chronicles the history of the sport in Pakistan.

“Take for example, the World Cup qualifiers in France. They were expected to win it and they won it, but they lost to a team like Poland in the process. At the second-rung Champions Challenge, they were beaten by New Zealand in the final. Sohail Abbas muffed as many as four penalty corners. They have been anything but convincing, and least of all consistent. With a record like that, I cannot put my money on Pakistan,” he says.

Ask him to pinpoint what exactly is wrong with Pakistan hockey and he breaks into an anecdote: “In the 2000 Olympics, Sohail Abbas was at the peak of his powers. In the semi-final, the South Koreans came up with a strategy to counter him — a suicide runner. The defender would gallop off the blocks and charge directly in the line of the shot, using his body to block it. The guy was taken to the hospital, and Sohail couldn’t convert even one out of the five penalty corners Pakistan got. The team think-tank didn’t have a Plan B and we lost. Even Pakistan hockey doesn’t have a Plan B,” he says, asking why it was that the Pakistan Hockey Federation (PHF) kept bringing back senior players ahead of a major competitions. “Sohail, for example, retired after the 2004 Athens Olympics. He went to play the Dutch League, earned money there and came back before the 2006 World Cup. He retired again and returned last year. It’s a retrogressive step, but the PHF can’t see this.”

First Hurdle

The Indian team that they take on in the massive opening match seems to be in even more trouble though. For the hosts, hockey has long fallen off the agenda. It did hit the headlines a month back when the players revolted against the federation and threatened to boycott the World Cup over a payment crisis.

The federation, Hockey India, is busy trying to conduct elections while the players — having shown never-seen-before unity over incentives — are fighting among themselves for captaincy. Suddenly the tournament itself seems to have dropped down in the priority list.

Rasquinha agrees that the team has too many things on its mind going into the World Cup. “The pressure will be on India to deliver. They have been struggling to cope with a lot of issues lately, and you don’t want those right before a major tournament. But hopefully the team will put it behind once on the field,” he says.

For two teams that are “hoping” to make the semis, the first hurdle assumes massive significance.

“You always want to start off with a win,” Rasquinha says. “We’ll face the likes of Australia and Spain subsequently, so we need to have the momentum and confidence. Emotions might run high while playing against Pakistan, but you need to keep them in check. In the end, it’s the three points that will matter.”

Coach Shahid agrees. “In a tournament like this, all you want to do is to get off to a good start. So it will be an important match. Even if we were playing Australia or Spain in the opening game, the intensity would have remained the same,” Shahid says.

Khan adds another angle to the importance of the opener: “At this point, realistically speaking, both teams are in contention for the 6th to 8th slot. Whoever wins this big match will have something to keep the fans happy.”

Irrespective of what happens in the much-awaited encounter, Rasquinha feels it’s important for the both teams to have a prolonged stay in the tournament. “There will be nothing like it if both teams do well here. You will see packed stadiums and the tournament will be a success.”

For a while now, commentators have said that hockey needed a revival in the sub-continent, simply for how different, and flamboyant, their game is compared to modern giants such as The Netherlands and Germany. This tournament wouldn’t be such a bad place to start.