Decline of Sub-Continental Hockey?

Over the years we have read a lot about the reasons of the steady decline of Indian sub-continental hockey. Experienced, learned pundits and mere amateurs like me have tried to unravel the root cause of this disheartening phenomenon without much success.

The theories for the decline range from change in playing surface, which, by a stretch of the imagination could be considered a legitimate reason, to the preposterous conspiracy theories that western hockey playing nations orchestrated the rules to bring about a collective down fall of the sub-continental “style” of hockey. Whatever that style is, in modern terms.

It would be juvenile to think that the reasons for the decline are few and can be counted on the finger-tips of one hand. Our hockey’s present unflattering state is the complex and cumulative result of several reasons ranging from lack of modernization, to a weak sporting cultural, to poor governance, to lack of adequate funding and to the meteoric rise of a cricket-culture which has comparatively left the other sports eating dust. These would be amongst a myriad of others.

So, to prioritize, what may be considered the main reasons, sample these:

1. Lack of long term planning and Vision:

There has been nothing systematic or planned in the approach adopted by India and Pakistan to return to world hockey dominance. We have abjectly failed to recognize that our glory days are over and we are unlikely to return to our past glories unless we act correctly…and now.

The hockey dominance these two nations exercised over the rest of the world, was indisputable and lasted for decades but was certainly never meant to be everlasting. Nothing is. This has been hard for many, including the clueless hockey administrators to accept. Both nations have almost exclusively resorted to living their modern hockey purely on past laurels without implementing the right corrective actions.

In effect, they have been in denial.

To return to the top fold, both should have made, maybe in collaboration, all efforts to identify the best in modern training methods and to implement them as a sustained long term strategy to produce world class results. Example: For decades we have lamented about poor physical fitness, but have done very little to improve this integral aspect of modern hockey. Granted, sub-continental players come to senior levels of the sport with a distinct disadvantage as in their younger formative years, many have not had the privilege and fortune to get a proper balanced diet. However, this is not an insurmountable problem, given modern dietary and exercise science which presently exists.

Hockey leagues either do not exist for every age group or are mal-administered and not permanent fixtures every year. Indoor hockey leagues and participation in international tournaments, is non-existent. Indoor hockey is the bedrock of modern hockey. The much superior administrators in Korea, China and Malaysia have recognized this and have started fielding indoor hockey teams to international tournaments. This form of hockey vastly improves reflexes and hand-eye coordination besides honing ball control skills. The sheer speed at which indoor hockey is played should have been the sole reason for the sub-continent adopting it as we take pride in what we consider is speedy and fast paced hockey. Modern hockey with goal-friendly rules, lightening fast poly-grass surfaces, hard plastic dimpled balls and hybrid sticks, is all about speed.

Talent spotting programs are not a science with us and are the left to individual coach or selector initiatives.

Absence of consistently structured and sustained long terms (4-12 year) plans, have been the bane of our hockey. The administration has changed coaches and ignored real talent with impunity and total disregard to the bigger picture – the future of hockey. Lack of continuity resulting from such embarrassing changes has led to rank loss of morale at crucial junctures (including during the course of a certain WC) and utter confusion in game strategy and result consistency.

2. Hockey Administration:

The deplorable administrations over the decades have been myopic, living in the stone age, blind to modern hockey requisites, self serving and have been the singular largest contributor to sub-continental hockey demise.

A lot has been said about this, so I’ll be brief here. These bodies have always been cobbled together from the same cesspool of inefficient career administrators – almost always unfit for other government posts. They have no love or passion for the sport, which you and I would think should be a pre-requisite for them. “Administrators” being the misnomer here. These individuals would have been shown the door on their first day in any corporate office for gross inadequacies related to basic management skills.

How can these characters be entrusted to run multi-million dollar hockey federations with a litany of above mentioned faults?

Modern sport requires an adroit and purely professional approach to administration and governance. This body should conduct their affairs above reproach with objective long term planning with a strict time-bound result oriented approach.

However, the existing sub-continental choice of appointing sport administrators, a bygone pre-1947 legacy, relies heavily on government past-honcho types to administer, is archaic and redundant. You could call it feudal in many ways.

Modernization is the order of the day. Unless a professional body, which has a proven successful business track record, such as the Sahara Group, manages Indian hockey, we have no hope at all.

You might question how is this possible as the Federation members have to be elected members and cannot be randomly appointed independent entities. My answer is: What stops these elected members from appointing a professional group to manage the affairs for them. Especially, when the elected federation has repeatedly been unmitigated failures in the past. Past players and coaches, as even now they do, can provide technical and sport related input to the professional body for a collective, honest, transparent and effective sports management.

3. Hockey’s Popularity:

It would be dishonest to blame Cricket of robbing hockey of charisma. Because it is not true at all.

Firstly, hockey’s charisma has not been lost beyond redemption. It is in deep slumber. To come out of this coma-like lethargy, sub-continental hockey needs a high-octane boost. Secondly, hockey has been badly neglected and just not been promoted enough to give it the right exposure.

The government and administrators would disagree, as millions have been pumped into the sport. However, like any other state funded project, most of the funding has been ill-used, ill-timed or has just vanished into thin air. Abracadabra!

The hockey mandarins have failed to recognize that with hockey they are sitting on a veritable gold mine. If they had packaged and presented the sport as the hockey loving millions desired, then they would have the Midas’ touch too. Hockey would up there with cricket, if not a close second in sheer popularity.

Neither 20 nor 50 overs and not even 5 days of cricket remotely compare to the sheer adrenaline rush from 70 minutes of pulsating end-to-end action with goals galore. Actually, hockey was inadvertently designed for TV. The bright green turf, flood-lit compact stadiums very suited to fan interaction, blinding ball and game speed, lots of individual brilliance and above all having the right air time ingredients – ample advertisement time and a trim, short and fast paced game. This is TV bliss.

“The-Gill” got it right with the Premier Hockey League (PHL), but it soon became the victim of the usual politicking that has sadly been the one dogged consistent with all Indian hockey happenings. The PHL was just taking off and could well have been a phenomenon challenging the later incepted cricket IPL in terms of TV rights revenue and over-all popularity. OK, let me correct myself, Indian hockey administration did do one thing right, they had the foresight to introduce PHL as hockey’s saviour. However, like so many past initiative failures, this is another failed chapter by the IHF.

The FIH recognizes Indian hockey’s exciting revenue and popularity generating potential and wants to put India back on the hockey world map. But, the ever present politics is preventing a stable administrative body from taking charge of Indian hockey, thereby loosing out on some very valuable international exposure and tournament time. So what’s new with Indian hockey?

4. Infrastructure & Funding:

Lame excuses. Take a leaf out of BCCI’s pages to learn how to generate phenomenally vast sums of money and then infuse most of them back into the sport to develop world class infra-structure. Who cares if the BCCI has along the way to their unmitigated success, enriched their administrators and players beyond the wildest aspirations of the common Indian? As long as they deliver, knock-out most of the other top teams and win the occasional world cup, no one will be-grudge them their affluence. As long as the amassing of wealth has been legal, the wealth per-se in not the bone of contention.

Need I say more. In the sub-continent, hockey definitely has a very realistic potential to self-generate itself.

Right, enough of my rant.

I am no expert and never profess to be one However, hockey administration is not rocket science. And we are very good at rocket science.

Why not hockey then?

I’ll leave you with this parting shot; food for thought:

If there is a will, then we can:

If I have one unwavering belief, it is; Indian and sub-continental hockey can be a world force once again, we just have to do it right. With honesty, integrity, transparency and single-minded dedication to succeed. Sounds like a tall order? Not at all, especially when you consider that these are the hallmarks of millions of successful individuals and thousands of businesses right in our midst, from the sub-continent itself.

Till the next time//