The Lost Glory.

There was a time when Indian hockey team is considered as "Strong" contender and obvious winner in any major event, and there is time when the same team is "Dark Horse" and "No Threat" to other country in any of the event, Isn't it shame that the 6 time consecutive Olympic gold medalist and total of 8 golds(Most by any country till date) in Olympics is struggling and playing qualifiers to get in Olympics.

So what's the actual reason of this tremendous downfall, couple of reason which i shortlisted are..

1) Cricket overshadowing hockey.
2) Negligence of Indian Hockey Federation.
3) No interest in hockey
4) No monetary gain.

Let's take a look of what and how Indian cricket is affecting Indian hockey, though hockey is national game but cricket is most watched, loved and played all across India, and why is that? The answer is simple, Cricket and cricketers deliver results, we can debate that Indian team is not consistent, but we can count the achievements and far as hockey is concerned i really don't see hockey team winning any major event, as mentioned earlier hockey team is even struggling hard to get into Olympics. I really admire BCCI to cash any chances they get to make money and uplift the game, IPL is current example but for me the best example was the song of "Chak de india", We heard "chak de" song every time when there were some wicket or boundaries in T-20 WC, and crowd just went berserk every time when they hear the song, and on the other hand indian hockey didn't even use it although the whole movie was on hockey, Ironical huh, So i deny the first option, Cricket is obviously not overshadowing hockey but there's always window for argument.


Now let's move to second option, is it the negligence of Indian hockey federation? well i second that, now when IHF is dismissed and "Hockey India" is governing body of indian hockey team, we can expect some good results, But before "Hockey India", IHF tried to revive hockey by starting Premier Hockey League(PHL) and people did watch that event, but it lasts for 3 years only(2005-2008), i'm not sure about PHL-2009 and PHL-2010 because i didn't heard about it and assuming it's over and obviously that was not good for Indian hockey, but people in IHF did make some money and even they can't deny it, but there wasn't enough money to pay the salary of hockey players, and this comes out couple of months ago, what a shame..

I'm left with last two options, "No interest in hockey" and "No monetary gain", Well as far as interest is concern i mentioned earlier that crowd is not going take any interest if you don't deliver results, so let there be result and people will take interest in game, but some can again argue that when there's no interest, there's will be no result, Well one leading bike company is promoting Hockey world cup advertisement in India, let's just hope that more and more people turn up to see this beautiful game. Regarding fourth option which is money then i think yes this is big issue, but i like to mention Indian cricket team before 1983, their condition was almost same(No money), but as they won world cup loads of opportunity widens for them and they absolutely cash it and cashing it till now. I just want Indian hockey team to cash some opportunity and really want to wish them best of luck for upcoming "Hockey World Cup"...




CHAK DE INDIA............