India's hopes of playing hockey in the Beijing Olympics came to an end when Great Britain romped to victory with a 2 - 0 win over India in the Olympic qualifiers finals. True to the nature of our country, the blame game has begun.
The politicians want KPS Gill to be sacked. The audiences (who never watch the game anyway) want the players and the coach to be sacked. All in all. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a solution.
But instead of doing patchwork, I think its important to see the root cause of this issue. Its important to find out why our national sport, which was our forte, our pride a few decades ago, is now down in the dumps. The media wants to accuse cricket of hogging all the limelight and corporate money. As a result, they claim, hockey has taken a beating.
While I dont deny the media claims, lets go back about 3 decades in our past. This was a time when hockey ruled. When no one knew/understood/played cricket. Hockey was our national sport and Dhyanchand a national hero. People were crazy about this sport because... well.. we always won.
Cricket was a sport of the rich and famous. If we ever drew a test match, it was celebrated as a victory. Cricket could never be a game for the masses, it was believed. They could never afford it.
Then came 1983, when an unknown boy from Haryana, coming from rather humble upbringing, changed cricket history forever. A certain Kapil Dev captained India's cricket team and won the world cup from the defending champions, the undefeatable West Indies. Perhaps a team that is still arguably the best cricket team ever to set foot on the field.
That day was important in Indian sports history, not just because the country woke up to a new sport, but also because starting that year, our victories in cricket started getting more frequent. And hockey, after Dhyanchand retired, was never the same. Slowly, we started to loose the grip on the game, loose the dominance that we had held for many years.
In the begining, cricket did not have the corporate money, or the big endorsement deals. Cricketers were paid around a 100 bucks a day when they played a test match. Incase a match finished in 4 days rather than 5, they were only paid for that much. And yet, the sport evolved. Evolved to become a rage in this country. Evolved to become the richest most watched sport in this country. Evolved to a religion.
Surely, all this dint happen because of the money.
The way I see it. Money and fame did not make cricket so famous. It was the other way round. The grit, determination and talent of players in that era, who played without the financial backing and still won, made cricket what it is. For the following years, cricket became a religion because a God called Sachin Tendulkar was born, who, despite being in a team that hardly ever won, dominated world cricket in such a way, that every one associated with the sport just watched him in awe and disbelief.
The way I see it, hockey does not necessarily need more money and attention to do well. What it needs is a Sachin Tendulkar. Its a doggy dog world out there. Corporates will not pump money into hockey until people start watching the game. They will not start watchin hockey, till we start winning something.
Hockey must not rely on the charity of its youger cousin, cricket. It must resurrect itself as the most watched sport of this country. It must fight for its right to remain the official national sport of India. It must START WINNING!!!
