“Sport is sometimes hard but honest and only the best 12 teams in the world will participate at the Olympic Games.”
The words of the International Hockey Federation (HIF) President Els van Breda Vriesman added further sting to the Indian hockey team that had lost to Great Britain in the sudden-death qualifying match, and with the loss, the team failed to make it to the Olympics for the first time in 80 years. For a nation that has won the Olympic gold a record 8 times, Indian hockey’s decline was complete after years of staggering on with little direction.
It was an inevitable disaster waiting to happen considering the way hockey was being run by the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). When the experienced Ric Charlesworth was appointed as technical director of Indian hockey, it was expected that he would turn out to be the catalyst for change. He is just into his fifth month of his tenure, but he has already been sidelined by IHF President K.P.S. Gill to the extent that the revered Aussie has not been paid a salary or reimbursed expenses of nearly $20,000.
The warning signs were all there. In 2005, The FIH termed IHF as the worst run hockey association in the world, and in 2006, India failed to make it to the semi-finals of the Asian Games. It is even more suprising that in 2001, a talented group players that had actually gone on to win the junior World Cup has been completely wasted and left to rot.
The problems that plague the state of the sport in India include the decline in the talent pool throughout the country, lack of proper management of resources, and autocratic rule by Gill, who continues to head the IHF despite overseeing the worst years of Indian Hockey, ever since he became IHF President in 1994.
While the Indian government remains a mute spectator because it cannot dismiss the IHF on the grounds of autonomy (damn the Olympic charter!), Indian hockey gets further caught up in the quagmire of bureaucratic red tape. That lesser hockeying nations such as China and Great Britain have overtaken us is a damning indictment on the pathetic state of our national sport.
Indian Hockey in Numbers
0 – the number of Olympic medals India has won since winning the Gold in 1980 at Moscow.
3 – the number of years since the last IHF general body meeting was held after vice-President Narendra Batra filed a writ against Gill in 2005 with regard to length of tenure and financial irregularities.
5 – the number of national hockey championships during Gill’s tenure.
6 – the number of the senior-most players sacked, along with the coach after India won its first Asian Games gold medal after 32 years in 1998 in Bangkok.
18 – the number of coaches changed since 1994.
40 – the number of astro turfs in India compared to 5 in South Korea and 3 in China, countries that will be playing in the Beijing Olympics.
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Charlesworth comes to India with probably a coaching resume that is on par with the best in any sport. After a stellar career as a player in the 1970 and the 1980s, Charlesworth took charge of the Australian Women’s Hockey team in the early 1990s and made them into the sort of dominating force that is now associated with the Australian cricket team. The womens team went to win the Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2000, the Champions trophy in 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999 and also the World Cup in between. Before the current role, Charlesworth was performance consultant with the New Zealand cricket team (did I mention he was a state cricket player too?) and has been in demand with the English Cricket board interested in hiring him. Oh, and he was also elected by the people of Perth to the National Parliament and was in the Parliament for 10 years.
