Starting from today, stick2hockey.com will bring out a series of articles, one each on the prospects of five teams in the Premier League, giving importance to the long neglected regional flavour in hockey, the regions’ ethos and history and, in the process, bring out the facundity and richness of culture of these regions. But before that a peep in to the past as to why and how the PHL can change the face of domestic hockey if staged carefully and continuously, for, the domestic hockey at present is moribund and ritualistic due to wanton neglect and for want of fresh air.

In the colonial times, religion was sought to be bedrock on which the edifice of sports could be raised. That’s why the metros of those times witnessed regular Pentangular tournaments especially in cricket; teams formed on the religious lines. Stars were born and groomed in these tournaments but the team members were strictly chosen based on their religious labels. Fortunately and not wholly unexpected, the premise failed after a brief bright spell in the early part 1900s.

Independent India rightly gave a big goodbye to the religious concept in sports, instead chose region as its replacement for drawing crowd to the stands. India is a vast country both geographically and demographically. There are at least 15 major languages spoken in India each by more than 400 million people, each etymologically different from the other. Cultural and social milieu of these regions, which are lingual based, too present a vast canvass. There lay the vast potential to tap. From the beginning hockey harnessed the regional fervour and tournaments where a state met the other brought more crowds than when a state a met a club or institutional side.

But as years went by provincial teams came second to Institutional teams. Club culture did not flourish for want of patronage and amateurism paving way for professionalism, and also the Clubs could not take on the invasion of institutional teams that tangled before the potential players the carrot of job. That was why in the early 70s when Indian Airlines attempted to form the team many knowledgeables opposed its entry into tournaments including the Nationals. Their fear was well founded. They felt if new institutional teams came into tournaments and Nationals, the States will lose its charm and the best of talent will migrate to institutions. Hockey faced its most severe of dilemmas at that juncture. But India was pioneering its own brand of socialism on political level and the Government’s role in sports could not escape from it. Every government department and public sector undertakings formed its own team. The big casualities were States and club culture. When the IHF gave associate membership status to a dozen institutional teams — in fact any organization that can pay Rs. 5 lacs as fee – that proved to be the last nail in the coffin. Unintentionally, the concept of institutions having the team has eaten away the long survived state and club cultures.

A simple fallout prove the point. Previously in the Executive Committee meetings, selection of host State/City for the Nationals used to be a hot topic. Those who organise Nationals got into prominence. Even the present IHF Secretary owes to his rise in the national scene to him organising the Nationals in Madurai. In the early 50s, Ashwini Kumar’s one of the fights against the then IHF president Naval H. Tata used to be on the matter of Punjab not allotted the Nationals. But in 90s, Nationals could not be held for want of bidders. Because, with the entry of many institutional teams the cost of hosting doubled and at the same time the regional flavour which used to be crowd puller, evaporated. Gate money had become a thing of past.

It would be really an interesting area of research — Whether hockey’s popularity withered due to the onset of Institutional teams. The idea of institutional biggies developing its own band of supporters, a la Barmy Armies, did not materialise. Domestic hockey died with that. May be in an odd occasion the contest between say Punjab Police and Indian Airlines could have drawn sizeable crowd, or for that matter between PSB and Punjab police, but remember the gates are free. That’s why even inter institutional contests did not strike a responsive chord among the public. Who goes to witness, say, all India Police Games or Postal Games, which are regularly held. They are more of a rituals than events of reckoning. The flavour that public identify with their place, language and ethnicity cannot be expected to manifest in Institutional teams. If at all, the difference was like between kilobyte and gigabyte.

Recently, state teams Kerala and Bengal played the final of the Football Nationals in Delhi and the crowd and their allegiance to teams were seen to be believed. Chief guest that day was the Minister for Petroleum and soon one of the department under him sponsored