Pillay bats for hockey league in India

Charity begins at home. At least this is what the Germans and Dutch believe. With their domestic structure banking on the time-tested club culture, the Europeans have managed to produce the best hockey leagues in the world. These highly competitive leagues have, in turn, produced some of the best players in the world.

Can we create a similar culture back home? A format that can prove beneficial both to the game and the players, give something to the fans to cheer about and help arrest the slide of the National Game?

The recent failed experiments with the Premier Hockey League (PHL) – which saw only four editions despite all the hype and hoopla – would deter even the stoutest of optimists. But Dhanraj Pillay still believes India needs similar efforts to help the game survive. “Such leagues help people unite. They help the player evolve,” says the veteran of seven foreign leagues.

Pillay is well aware of the peculiarities of the Indian scenario, yet he is hopeful. “I know the ground realities in India are different from those in European countries, but such events in our country can do a world of good to the game,” he insists.

According to his estimate, India probably hosts the maximum number of domestic tournaments in the world in a single season; but they don’t serve any purpose. The game fails to cash in on them, in terms of nurturing talent or creating a buzz for hockey, quite the way the Dutch, the Germans and Malaysians do at the moment. “Look at the amount of hockey the Indians are playing – almost 365 days a year. But they are all memorial tournaments, district level events, inter-department matches. Who gains from them? In the top hockey nations, it’s different. They focus purely on the national club championship which is big,” points out Pillay.

Another admirer of foreign club hockey is Dilip Tirkey. The most capped player in the world says he was amazed to see the number of sponsors that supported his team, Klein Zwitzerland HC, in the Dutch league. The team was self-sufficient.

“There were seven or eight sponsors, including the main one,” he says, adding that support came in other forms too. “KZ had its own fan following and each match was watched by at least 5,000 people, if not more. I think this is something we need in India very badly,” he says. Tirkey played in the Dutch league for three years. “These clubs offer you good money and you also learn a lot from the competition there,” he says.

Former Olympian Jagbir Singh, who had left India dejected after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (where India finished seventh), found himself in an altogether different world when he joined a German club soon after. “I did not want to come back (to India). Everything was quite new for me. I was quite impressed with the systematic way they did things at my club, Stuttgarter Kickers. It’s sad that even over a decade after I left Germany, we in India have not reached that level,” he says.

For those who have had a taste of foreign leagues, to crave for something in a land which was once the cradle of hockey, is only natural. But for that to happen, as Pillay says, the answer lies in professionalising an archaic, rotting set-up . “First,” says the plainspeaking former striker, “turn professional in your approach. Only then begin thinking of having a similar set-up in place.” But as the recent shenanigans showed, it is only wishful thinking. Indian hockey is miles away from returning to its past glory.