“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.

This weekend promises to be extremely interesting for Indian sport (well, cricket) . The first final of the trination series down under is played on Sunday and on the same day in Kuala Lumpur , the under 19 side will look to make history when they take on the winners of the semifinal between Pakistan and South Africa in the under 19 world cup final. Obviously, the entire nation is going to be focused on the Sydney Cricket Ground as the Indian team tries to go one up in the best of three final.

But, tomorrow another series is going to commence, an event that should be of equal importance to the sports fraternity in the country. However, unlike the event on the other side of the planet, this is going to get very little coverage unless the team in question fails in its quest. For tomorrow, the Indian men’s hockey team is going to embark on a one week battle to ensure it qualifies for the Beijing Olympics. And if it doesn’t, the complete fall from the top of the hockey world in 1975 to the third tier of international hockey will be complete.

The teams:

Austria, Chile, Great Britain, Mexico and Russia are the teams which will be looking to get that last qualification spot for the Hockey event in Beijing. The fact is that barring Great Britain the other teams are all expected to be easy pickings for the Indian team. But, the big problem is that the final spot is going to be decided by a grand final next Sunday. And Great Britain has been doing extremely well of late, it could just happen that India has a great tournament but is knocked out of the Olympics because of a disastrous seventy minutes in the final. ( India’s draw with Poland in the Sydney 2000 Olympics effectively ruled them out of the semifinals and Poland were a team we were expected to beat).

The positive signs:

One of the most positive aspects has to be how young this team is, which means few of them have known failure on the international stage. Obviously the fantastic Asian Cup victory in Chennai in 2007 has helped boost the confidence of the team (pity the event was completely overshadowed by the 20-20 victory). Players such as Diwakar Ram (India’s great drag flicker hope) and Prabjhot Singh have made rapid strides over the past year. Plus, experienced players like Dilip Tirkey, Bimal Lakra and Ignace Tirkey will add steel to the side. The team has a good coach in Joaquim Carvalho who is committed to playing fast and attacking hockey. Further, having a man such as Ric Charlesworth providing his inputs should help.

The negatives:

None of the other teams in the event has the pedigree or the history of the Indian team and this intensifies the pressure on the Indian team. If they fail, references to the glorious run between 1928 and 1960 when we won the gold medal at every Olympic games will come thick and fast. Difficulties in qualifying for the Olympics is not new for the Indian team but never has it come down to making one final spot. Further, there has already been an instance of not everything in the preparation going the right way- as premier striker Rajpal Singh withdrew from the team claiming poor treatment only to retract the statement 24 hours later.

The next one week will officially kickstart India’s interest in the 2008 Olympics. One just hopes the Indian Hockey team is at the opening ceremony on the 8th of July 2008 in Beijing.

India’s fixtures:

March 1: vs Russia

March 2: vs Austria

March 4: vs Mexico

March 6: vs Britain

March 8: vs Chile.

Recently, I saw a print ad featuring Vijay Amritraj. It pronounced him the greatest Indian tennis player. This set me thinking. Is he really the greatest: over the Krishnans, over Paes? I set about picking my greatest Indian tennis player of all time.

Ramanathan Krishnan

Learning tennis under the tutelage of his dad, he was Indian tennis’ first star. Growing up in the small town of Tenkasi and later playing on poor facilities in Madras, reaching a ranking of Number 3 in the world must rank as astounding. I have never seen clips of Ramanathan Krishnan play. But from what I have read, he was supposedly a master of angles and great volleyer to boot. Anyone who reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon twice and was reckoned as among the top players he has faced by Rod Laver must’ve been good.

His career record was helped by a number of victories in India which had a more bustling tennis circuit in those days. The inability to win a grand slam will remain a black mark especially in an era when some top players were absent (due to the professional status imbroglio).

Vijay Amritraj

A tall, well-built youngster from Madras was to be the next great flag-bearer of Indian tennis. A strong serve and volleyer and good movement on court were his major strengths. The grainy clippings one sees of the man indicate some grace and speed on court. But the lack of fitness and stamina to play long matches proved to be his undoing in the quest for grand slam glory.

He was the captain of the Indian Davis Cup team that reached two finals and he also has some famous career victories against Bjorn Borg, Connors, and McEnroe. A career high ranking of 16, two Wimbledon singles quarter-finals and some notable performances with brother Anand on the doubles circuit: strong claims to title of greatest Indian tennis player.

Ramesh Krishnan

A player who so flattered to deceive. With victories in the junior circuit at Wimbledon and the French Open, one expected many great things of this man. But the lack of fitness and powerful serve and ground strokes proved to be his undoing. McEnroe once famously remarked: “The guy serves at 10 miles an hour and I still can’t return it”. Ramesh Krishnan also had one of the best lobs in world tennis, a lob that repeatedly flummoxed his training partner Stefan Edberg.

In spite of his short-comings, Ramesh performed well on the pro-circuit reaching a career high mid-20s ranking and the quarterfinals of the US Open and Wimbledon. His performances in the Davis cup were quite impressive too: playing a match in the darkness towards the end of his career on the alien French clay and holding his own to take India to the semifinals of the Davis Cup. His straight sets victory over the wily Australian Wally Masur in the fifth match of the Davis Cup rubber was probably his most famous Davis Cup victory.

Leander Paes

Probably the most famous Indian tennis player. This live-wire on court makes up for a weak serve and lack of powerful ground-strokes with his speed, great reflexes at the net and a “never say die” attitude. His performances on the singles tour has left much to be desired. But then, his game isn’t one for modern power tennis. His success on the doubles tour is explained by the speed, reflexes and the presence of a partner with greater power.

His list of achievements on the Davis Cup needs no recounting: Goran Ivanevisic, Wayne Ferreira, Arnaud Boetsch on clay. Paes also has one of the best individual records of all time in the Davis Cup (81-30) placing him fifth in the all time list (a remarkable feat considering over 4500 players have taken part in the Davis Cup).

The one big achievement that continues to stand out in Paes’s impressive resume is the Olympics Bronze medal in 1996. The true meaning and value of that achievement can be gauged by the fact that this was India’s first individual medal at the Olympics for 44 years.

With an Olympic Bronze medal, this multiple Grand slam winner stakes his claim to being India’s finest tennis player of all time.

Who is India’s finest?

In my opinion, it has to be Paes. The other players while being better singles players don’t have significant tournament victories. Paes has a significantly better doubles record and some awesome Davis Cup performances and the Olympics bronze mean Paes scores over the rest. In my opinion, the closest competitor was probably Ramanathan Krishnan. But he played in an era when tennis was less competitive and took less physical toll on a player. For playing as long as Paes has in this era and giving Indian tennis fans something to cheer about, Paes is my pick.

PS: People might wonder why I haven’t included Bhupathi in this list as his performances on the doubles circuit have been quite impressive too and Leander probably owes some doubles titles to Bhupathi’s serve and volley. But Bhupathi’s performances on the singles circuit and Davis Cup are nothing to write home about and he is clearly not the best Indian player of his era.

Over the next few months, the future of India’s two biggest sports will come into the hands of two Australian men. First Dav Whatmore will take over as the head of the National Cricket Academy, just months after being a certainty to take over the national team. The National Cricket Academy has been in very poor condition of late and has been plagued with problems such lack of vision and continuity and Whatmore’s appointment might just be the tonic required to revive it.

But more interestingly (at least to me!) Australian legend Rick Charlesworth will take over as the technical director of Indian Hockey. The move has largely been driven by the efforts of the International Field Hockey Federation (FIH). The FIH believes (rightly) that the success of the Indian team is crucial to the future of the game and has launched a program to promote the game in India. Part of the program is trying to improve the game at the grassroot level in India and hence the appointment of Charlesworth.

Who is Rick Charlesworth anyway?

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.

Hockey Renaissance?

Since 1983, India’s national game has had the misfortune of being overshadowed by India’s obsession- cricket. To be honest, Indian Hockey teams haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory over the past two decades- a few bright spots (such as the Asian Games Gold in 2002) not enough to erase other failures, especially the ones in the Olympic Games. Frankly, Indian Hockey lost its way thanks to the inability to keep up with technology changes and the transformation of Hockey from a skill only sport to a sport also dependent on pace and power.

Administrators and former players have long complained about the lack of interest in the national game but a good performance in the Beijing Olympics will definitely bring the interest and money into the game. The Indian Hockey team seems to be on an upward trajectory under Joaquim Carvalho (winning the Asia Cup in Chennai and finishing third in Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia) and is playing good attacking Hockey. (the team is yet to qualify for the Olympics though and needs to win the qualifying event in Santiago, Chile)

Potential Pitfalls:

Charlesworth’s road in Indian Hockey is going to be full of potholes. One, there is bound to be inertia from current coaches and former players. Two, Charlesworth (unlike Whatmore) has only worked in a system where everything has been methodical and systematic from the age-group levels. Three, Charlesworth has a reputation for being forthright with his views and this may not go well with the IHF. ( I am looking at you Mr. Gill). Four, people are expecting results far too soon and I get the feeling he is going to be judged prematurely.

Also, what exactly is Charlesworth’s role in the current setup going to be. All parties involved have made it clear that he is not going to be involved in the activities of the national teams but is going to be working behind the scenes. Again, this will require clear co-ordination on the part of the IHF, the state bodies and organizations like Indian Airlines (which hire the players) and our Hockey hasn’t exactly been famous for organization.

It would great if Charlesworth gets involved in the youth structure and looks at improving the technique, the strength and physical aspects of the players who are emerging on the national scene. Also, he is expected to be involved in training coaches and this could have a significant impact on Indian Hockey as well. According to reports, Charlesworth is set for the long haul and is coming with his wife and kids to settle down in December.

India is yearning for heroes (of any type) and if Mr. Charlesworth can help in any way in producing a few on the hockey field, this entire exercise will be quite worth it.

An article on Dav Whatmore’s appointment will appear here later this week.

In keeping with this website’s tendency to write about anything even remotely connected to sports, this is a review of Chak de India: a very entertaining movie, well worth a watch even though it stars Shah Rukh Khan.

Based on the life of Meer Ranjan Negi, the movie is about a man’s quest to redeem himself in the eyes of his countrymen. That the medium is hockey is just incidental.

A bunch of women from around the country are coached by a disgraced former hockey star. How he forges the individuals into a winning unit, in the process earning their respect and trust forms the narrative. It is a movie with a standard under-dog winner template: happened in other underdog sports movies, even in troubled high school kids movies in Hollywood.There is a problem with filming hockey, I have found that it is very hard to follow the ball on television. It moves too rapidly and we at best have an approximate idea of its location. And in this regard, the hockey scenes in the movie are handled really well. That many of the members of the team have had an exposure to the sport is evident during the scenes. Kudos to the casting team for their choices. And what can I say about SRK that hasn’t already been said? The role of Kabir Khan only requires the only 2 expressions that SRK seems to possess in his repertoire these days: clenched jaws or a quivering face with glycerine induced tears. He handles both of them with ease.

In the absence of an obvious common enemy unlike in ‘Lagaan’, the sub-plots and the strong characters of the women provide an interesting back-drop without meandering too much from the main storyline. Though one feels that the occasional digs taken at cricket and the hockey administration should have been more forceful.

Yes, the movie will raise awareness about hockey and give some much needed publicity but it won’t change anything. Lack of encouragement for women’s sport (in fact for any sport other than cricket and maybe chess) will continue. Women will pressured to fall in line after they have got their government grants. Our training facilities won’t improve to the standards they showed in Australia in the movie in the near future. Former hockey stars are hoping that SRK will become a brand ambassador for the sport but I am certain that our officials will squander another golden opportunity to revive the sport. All in all a depressing thought that even Bollywood appreciates the sport more than the IHF.

Another Asian Games came by and went, and India managed to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Not much of a surprise actually, considering that is what they have been doing at every global sporting arena. Thank goodness that the weightlifters were barred from taking part this year thanks to their past sins, else they would have hogged a major part of the headlines (still for the wrong reasons) themselves. But if there was one incident, or ‘news-item’ that made Seema Antil, the Indian hockey team etc’s efforts at infamy pale in comparison, it would be the gender bending act of Santhi Soundarajan.

Sportswomen being accused of masculinity is nothing new. The dawn of the 20th century saw women taking part in sports on a scale far larger than ever before. And soon enough, you had the ‘femininity’ of some highly successful female athletes being questioned. Sometimes, as in the case of Martina Hingis famously calling Mauresmo ‘half a man’ because she came to the Australian Open ‘with her girlfriend’, sportswomen were taking a dig at their own ilk. Rumours are rife that this might be the case with regards to Santhi as well, what with reports going around that it was a teammate of hers that complained to the authorities that caused the gender test to be taken. It’s a pity, really. There have been instances in the past of a ‘man’ competing as a woman and getting away with it. Take for example Stella Walsh, who as any good sports quizzer will tell you won Poland the gold in the women’s 100m race in the 1932 Olympics only to be discovered at her autopsy much later in 1980 that she had underdeveloped male genitalia and XY chromosomes. Stella’s case was also the one that led to a general agreement in the sporting world that one’s chromosomal gender need not always be an indication of one’s social/biological gender, and by the time of the 2000 Olympics, compulsory gender testing had been done away with.

Another reason why it is a pity is that no one can begrudge Santhi her hard fought achievements. Born to poor, rural and uneducated parents, and having lived all her life as a girl, she wouldn’t have given much thought to the fact that she did not have menstrual cycles like a normal woman, as she would have dismissed it as some medical aberration that would cost her a lot of money, that she could not afford, to probe deeper into, and instead concentrated on the one thing she did best, and knew that one day would bring her glory, i.e. run fast. What is a mystery to many is that Santhi had actually passed the gender tests of AFI without any hitches. This is only points out to the fact the outdated (though probably a better indicator of gender) physical examination method is what is prevalent in India and not chromosomal testing. For all its hi-funda science, chromosomal testing singles out female athletes whose genetic make-up, though not ‘normal’ gives them no unfair competitive advantage. And not to mention the psychological harm post-disclosure caused by gender testing in general.

The Santhi incident has prompted the introduction of gender tests at the National Games in Guwahati in a couple of months’ time. And this time, they are going the chromosomal way. May not be the morally right thing to do, but at least this keeps them in line with what is done internationally, and thus prevent another Santhi from happening, which would be good for both Indian athletics, and more importantly the athlete would not have face public humiliation at this large a scale.

Hockey

Indian hockey continues to reach new lows with every tournament. The Asian Games at Doha was a disaster. For the first time in the history of the Asian Games, India has finished outside the top three. While it is true that we are no longer a world power, it is a rude shock to be informed that we are not even among the top Asian teams. India was beaten by China. Now, that is a news headlines that would have evoked laughter a few years back. But China is now showing us that they are a force to reckon with. They beat
India in the group stages and then beat the other super power, Pakistan in the semi-finals. Â

I think it is time for KPS Gill and his bunch of cronies to leave Indian Hockey alone. They have done enough damage. And Mr. Gill has the audacity to say, “10 bad minutes cost us the match”. We seem to have 10 bad minutes in every game. The Australians, the Dutch know that India is a dangerous team in the first half. The last fifteen minutes expose the lack of stamina and absence of alternate game plans. It is also disheartening that Indians haven’t adapted well to the new style that the Europeans practice. And to top it all, our selection policies leave most hockey fans scratching their heads in confusion. Why a player like Viren Rasquinha wouldn’t play is beyond me. Â

The lack of consistent performance and official indifference to the plight of hockey, the constant chopping and changing of coaches, regional bias in team selection are disheartening. The hope now is, we can only go one way: up.

Am sure the readers of this blog would not have expected an article with so much ’sex’ and tragedy in it. But then such is sports.

Thejaswi Udupa and Prof

Technorati Tags: Santhi, Santhi+Soundarajan, Gender+Test, Runner, Athletics