There are a multitude of factors that have together contributed to the downfall of Indian National Hockey.
When I was in school in India, I played hockey from 6th standard to 10th standard for my school. A lot of us may not be playing anymore but we still follow the game in our own little ways. I keep in touch with the school and trust me there is no dearth of passionate coaches and players who are passionate about the game.
Our failure to qualify for the Olympics is a sad and embarassing moment in the history of our national sport. However, instead of writing it off as the death of the sport we should take it as a serious wake up call. I know for sure there are individuals who love the game and would love to play it, there are people who are involved in the game. We have to revitalize our society and system to encourage and develop the game.
Our school was in Navi Mumbai so we were in an interesting situation. We fell under Thane district and played under Thane division. However, we were eligible to play in the Mumbai league too. As a player in school here are some factors I personally noticed as detrimental to the game.
1) Only Private Schools are able to fund sports. My school a private school maintained a great sports facility. We were provided equipment, we had decent condition soccer field, hockey field, track and field, basketball courts etc. Public schools do not have the funding to encourage sports, so they tend to invest in the 'popular' sport which is cricket. Any donations towards other developmental activities are siphoned away.
2) Hockey leagues in India are a big f*****g joke. Absolutely ridiculous. In Thane District there were only three to five schools competing in hockey. The district championships were held always at one schools ground, and that school placed its own coaches as referees. You can imagine the results with home turf advantage and your own coach being the referee. The reason for not having professional neutral refrees and grounds was lack of funds. Our school offered to take the cost of booking Bombay Hockey Association grounds and obtaining BHA's certified referees. We played there one year, where the good teams actually one instead of the team coached by the refree. After that the BHA schedule was inconvinient, it was too much of a hassle to travel to Bombay (bus, fuel, etc.) Back to square one.
3) There is no selection process. The school that wins the district represents disctrict, instead of picking the best players for the district. The school that wins division represents the division instead of picking best players in the division. Only when you come at state level does each state pick the best players. However, due to the lack of selection process some actually "good" players are left behind.
4) Instead of hosting the division level tournaments at professional grade grounds they are held in rural grounds, which are a joke. The grounds are poorly maintained instead of either clay or grass its a mixture. Let gras grow where it grows let the rest be clay. People let their cattle, goats, graze and poop on sports grounds. Games can be interrupted with cattle, goat herds passing through the ground. This picture below is an actual division level match in Jalgaon Maharashtra where a guy just drives through the field on his bike, not caring about the fact that this is a championship game being played. With such blatant disrespect how can a game develop.
5) Regionalism and Religionism - Our school was a private Catholic school from Navi Mumbai. We were pretty urban and modern. We played in shorts instead of ankle length skirts (how some of those girls played in ankle length skirts is a mystery) the boys and girls team practiced and hung out together.
The amount of lewd gestures comments and derogatory remarks against our girls team was unimaginable. We were girls aged twelve to sixteen being called sluts and whores because we happened to come from an urban background. Trust me it is nerve wrecking to concentrate on a game with people treating you in a derogatory way.
Also there is a strong anti-Catholic sentiment in rural India. The school that provided lodging for the games in Dhule ran out of room for lodging. While the other school boys and girls were accomodated in the dorms our boys had to sleep in the bus, while we were given a classroom to sleep that had to be evacuated every morning. The school also refused to allow us to drink water from the drinking water vessels in the school. If we tried a big lady with a stick would appear out of nowhere chasing us with a stick. We had to drink from the taps outside.
If a Hindu school commits a foul it is not seen, but any little thing by a Catholic school player is a foul. One of the boys from our school was hit on the head with a hockey stick and collapsed on the ground bleeding with a concussion. He was rushed to the hospital for stitches. No foul was given to the boy who hit him on the head.
6) Education or Sport - A big dillemma is whether one should focus on education or sports. A lot of girls from our team were forced by parents to drop out for SSC. Luckily the boys team was mostly composed of boys from the orphanage run by our school.
After SSC I had a dillemma, there are three Junior colleges with a girls team in Mumbai St.Xaviers, Khalsa and St. Andrews. St. Xaviers was too long of a commute and would be impractical, Khalsa and St.Andrews were not so good with academics and I studies were important for me too. I could have continued with the school in Navi Mumbai I played for but they were a science only college I wanted arts. So I had to quit hockey and enroll in Ruia.
In contrast the Bombay League was so different. Our school did not register the girls team for the Bombay league for a while since we were newly formed and unprepared. However, when I was in eigth standard we started playing Bombay league.
It was an amazing experience. We lost our first game 6-0, but we loved playing it. These girls were really well trained athletes. We were not playing against a bunch of wild beasts who just hit the ball around. The game was fast paced and competitive. There was so much skill involved like dribbling, passing, dodging.
Thr grounds were amazing. Schools like Don Bosco, St. Teresa, Sacred Heart, Khalsa College, St. Andrews, these schools kept impeccable grounds. Grass ground perfectly even, trimmed and mowed. No stones, rocks, ditches and most importantly no cattle grazing. The ball traveled smoothly and quickly.
Crowds even better. There was actually press coverage reporting daily scores and reports in the newspapers. Students showed up to support their teams, and locals would come to watch games being played. Yes there were also people coming to see hot guys and girls sweating out on the field, its part of the game and an aspect that adds to fan following.
An actual selection process - After the league season is over the talent scouts call the best players for a selection camp. After a rigorous selection camp the best players are picked to represent Bombay in the national games. Surprisingly the Bombay teams picked only out of the schools and clubs within the city were ten times better than the Maharashtra state team which had the rest of the state to pick from.
Despite losing all our Bombay league games we begged our principal that we did not want to play the Thane district tournament anymore. We would rather lose in a good competitive game, with good grounds and crowds rather than play in stupid rural tournaments that had meaning and did nothing to improve the game.
So to improve the game
- Invest in the game. Pick a few central towns in rural areas to develop 'good' grounds for tournaments. Encourage retired players, certified refrees to volunteer their services to tournaments. If not make it mandatory.
- Do away with biases, stop harassing teams and discriminating against them because of their background.
- Selection process, have a solid selection process right from the start where you pick and develop good players.
- Balance education and sports, allow preponing or postponing of exams for players in light of major tournaments. Develop more club teams so students can still play the sport if their school does not have the team. Encourage schools to share resources so that they can pool resources to developc combined teams and academics.
- Make hockey cool and hip. Shirtless practice sessions, girls in short shorts encourage audiences to go enjoy the games. Schools should list upcoming tournaments and encourage students to go and cheer their teams and others. Offer transportation or encourage PTA groups to organize trips to go watch games. In Bombay leage games we had McDonalds, and other places set up stands for snacks and drinks and sponsor. Get an economic system of promotion and sponsorhip for all levels of the game. Once the game is cool and has economic investment, parents automatically encourage their children to paly.
Kumkum Bhagya
Hollywood
Anupamaa
Health and Fitness
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