Friday 5 August 2016

Indian Hockey - The Slide to Abyss

Possibly, it’s the most pertinent time to talk about this. There used to be a superpower in international hockey by name India, completely different from the India we see today. It entered with a bang and maintained the gusto for 32 long years before becoming just another B-grade team. India entered Olympics in 1928 and conceded just 9 goals in a total of 7 olympics with no more than 1 goal in any match while scoring 187 goals in total trashing countries all over. USA was the worst hit in that Indian tornado where they were trashed 24-1 in 1932, the worst defeat ever handed over to any team in international hockey and then by 16-0 in 1956. It is said that, the previous victor, Britain refused to contest in 1928 because they know for sure, they will be defeated by Indians, their subservients. The stats till India was the world champion is below.


Even, 1960 was OK. It lost just a single match and conceded two goals in total. What just happened between 1960 and 1964 because of which India's slide was starkly visible? Why are we in a state today where we signed off India, a team which gave six back to back golds as a serious contender for the gold medal? Is it because of the callousness in our managing of our institutions? Is it because of corruption and cronyism? Is it because of lack of funding or sponsorship? Is it because our focus is only on one particular sport, viz. Cricket?
Not just hockey, we will have to look into all our sports and try to correct what went wrong. For a country of a billion, bleating in joy on getting six medals including only one gold is never going to be a source of pride.

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