Three decades without a single Olympic medal. This Independence Day, MSN India looks at the soap called 'Indian hockey'.
As India celebrates its 63rd Independence Day, we take a look at the journey of the National Game from glory to shame. From the highs to lows... from celebration to capitulation...
Almost 2 decades before India achieved its Independence in 1947, there was a moment that matched the joy that was obtained after 'freedom'. When the Indian national hockey team won its first Olympic Gold medal in 1928, there was joy that superceded any amount of pain that went into the freedom struggle. The team led by world's greatest hockey player of all-time Dhyanchand, sent out a strong message to the world that hockey was India's very own invention.
The 'magician' was not just the player of the tournament but an architect of India's national game. And it didn't end there. In the highly charged and controversial 1936 Berlin Olympics, such was India's dominance that the performance in the final was included in the famous film 'Olympia' by Leni Riefenstahl. Indian hockey kept hitting new highs with each passing day and the medals kept pouring in. The most special one came in 1948 when India beat England in London, a year after India gained its Independence. Six Olympic gold medals in six Olympics and a team that was the unstoppable giant of world hockey. Indian hockey was the toast of world sport .
Ironically, the slide started in no time. For the first time since the start of the Modern Olympics, India failed to win the hockey Gold. In 1960 at Rome, Pakistan beat India 1-0 to win the title. That was a sign of things to come. Pakistan's partition from an independent India also meant in many ways a separation of a hockey superpower. Prodigious talents not in the same team but now in two different ones. The downfall of 1960 reversed momentarily in 1964 when India won back the Gold but the margins were starting to slip, a stat that usually goes unnoticed in pursuit of wins and losses. In that Olympics at Tokyo, although India won the Gold, the team during the group stages could only hold Spain and Germany to draws. India had to wait for 16 long years to win its next Olympic Gold at Moscow in 1980.
Unfortunately, 3 decades have passed and India has neither won gold, silver nor bronze after that. The slide soon turned into capitulation and India's national game got embroiled into off-field issues. 'Politics' ruled the game. The struggle for power was almost a daily ritual. The sport had fallen off the international radar. All this when the European and Australasian contenders surged their way to the status of new powers of world hockey. There was the perennial debate about Asian style and European style but every hockey lover would know deep within that hockey is won from the heart and not only on the field.
For the last 5 years, the national game has drifted to national shame territory and the prolonged battle between KPS Gill and Hockey India just seems to find no logical end. Whether it is IHF or Hockey India at the helm of affairs, who cares? How does it matter to the little child of 'poor' rural India, which has been the world's home to one of the most beautiful games on earth. We wouldn't care who runs the sport as long as India's heady days come back again. India cannot afford another decade of the national game without an Olympic Gold.
