Hockey has long seized to be a national obsession so it’s little wonder that it took the worst debacle in 80 years for the sport to hog the limelight.
Darkest days are upon the ‘national’ sport but pundits believe it is time to give hockey a boostPUNE: Hockey has long seized to be a national obsession so it’s little wonder that it took the worst debacle in 80 years for the sport to hog the limelight, become the top news on television channels and find a place on the front page of newspapers, like it has in the past 24 hours.
Long considered the National sport of the nation, a sport that gave the country one of its first super stars in Dhayanchand, is now without a single star that a cricket crazy nation can identify with.
However, in the darkest hour, the general sentiment is that of hope for a brighter future. Indian football captain Baichung Bhutia said, “Every sport passes through lean phases and they need support and courage for upliftment. Bringing it down won’t help the cause, it will eve be more harmful. There should be enough support from the government.”
Former All-England champion Pullela Gopi Chand knows what it takes to become a champion. The national badminton coach said, “Winning and losing is a part of any sport. It is a shame that our country who has eight Olympic gold medals but have not qualified for the Olympics for the first time since 1928. It is a national sport and will remain a national game. Let us wake up and boost hockey rather than crush it.”
Vasudev Baskaran is the last captain to lead India to an Olympic gold, at the Moscow Games in 1980. He wonders if anyone at all treats hockey as a national game anymore.
“First give hockey a place of pride and then we shall talk about it being a National game. Even though hockey is the National game, tell me who gives it the importance of a national game. Tigers are been killed so do we change the national animal,” the former skipper and ex-coach of the national side added.
Adille Sumariwalla, a multi national 100 metre champion is more positive. “It is a shame even if anyone believes that hockey should cease to be the National game. Instead, we should support the team and the sport in this hour of crisis. Take a cue from cricket. We were knocked-out of the World Cup in the Caribbean but a young side went on to win the World T20,” the former sprinter added.
Piyush Pandey, the National creative director of O&M, knows a thing or two about the marketing of sports.
“Despite the best efforts made by Shah Rukh Khan in Chak De India to promote hockey, the game has failed to rise to the desired level. Oodles of money are being spent for events like the Indian Premier League. Can’t we have more resources for our hockey players? We should not abandon the sport,” Pandey said. Minus, star-value, money, basic infrastructure and results, hockey seems to be living only on hope for now.
—With Bivabasu Kumar & Sanjib Guha
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