Shot in the arm for the sport

The Asian Champions Trophy win may well re-open the gates of relative success in terms of getting the right kind of media for the hockey team, as well as paving the way for Hockey India to try and keep the Champions Trophy tournament here.

MS Unnikrishnan

India’s triumph in the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy at Ordos (China) has lifted the sagging reputation of the game, and Hockey India can now breathe easy, as the team was selected and sent by it, in a controversial manner. On the eve of the team’s departure to Ordos, the HI disciplinary committee had taken severe action against two players — mid-fielder Sardar Singh and drag-flicker Sandeep Singh — by banning them for two years for walking out of the national camp at Bangalore without permission.

The HI top brass had felt that it was time to act tough as these players were vitiating team discipline, which was vouchsafed by the team management, including new foreign coach Michael Nobbs. Though HI has given the duo a month’s time to appeal, it’s unlikely that the ban will be lifted, now that captain Rajpal Singh and Co. have shown that they can play with spirit and win if they are given the right kind of backing and support and a disciplined team.

This win was also sweeter as India remained unbeaten at the league phase — the only unbeaten team — before downing arch-rivals Pakistan in the title contest. That India won this important trophy in a Chinese city after finishing outside the medal bracket in the last Asian Games at Guangzhou last year, necessitating their qualification for the 2012 London Olympics, was poetic justice indeed.

New coach Nobbs of Australia has begun his job on a winning note to instill confidence in the players and the hockey administrators that his choice was not wrong, after all.

This win will also help force the FIH to re-think its threat of pulling out the Champions Trophy from Delhi, as now HI, in conjunction with the IHF and the Government, will be able to rope in sponsors for the Champions Trophy as the game has once again come into focus for the right reasons.

The tough stand taken by the FIH that it will not accept the forging of a working relationship between Hockey India and the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) and the threat to pull out the Champions Trophy, arguing that the prestigious event was awarded to HI to organise and Sports Minister Ajay Maken’s efforts to bring in a truce between HI and IHF and the Indian Olympic Association’s stand that it too would not accept the merger, had all got the game mired in a controversy. But the title win will have a soothing effect, giving more bargaining power to HI.

The Ministry can now persuade the RBI to release the money owed to the FIH for hosting the World Cup, to pave the way for hosting of the Champions Trophy, since that the team has yet again to qualify for the Olympic Games. (India did not qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for the first-time ever in the history of the championship after finishing outside the medal bracket in the 2006 Doha Asiad, and then flunking the Olympic qualifiers in Chile).