Great Debacle Indian Hockey in Unreliable Hands
March 29, 2008 by Open Article Submission
Filed under News
Where do we go from here? The knockout punch that we received at the hands of Great Britain in the finals of the Olympic qualifying hockey tournament played in Santiago, the capital of Chile, was nothing sort of a national catastrophe! Thanks to the defeat Indian hockey team will not be seen in the Beijing Olympics to be held later this year. The pain that this defeat has inflicted on the Indian hockey lovers is difficult to bear. For a country which has so far won a record number of eight Olympic hockey gold medals and has never missed the Olympic games in the past eighty years, it is difficult to digest the fast that this time it will have to miss the games.
The news of India’s ouster from the final rounds of Beijing Olympics might have shocked and surprised many, which also includes hockey experts of our archrivals Pakistan. But the bitter truth is that the writing their on the wall was very very clear for a long time. It is also a bitter truth that we did not perhaps take the ominous indications very seriously, let alone start corrective measures to stall the rot. The Indian hockey federation [IHF], which governs the game in the country, instead of pulling up it’s socks and taking corrective measures, remained busy in putting foreword lame excuses and painting false rosy pictures for future by making false claims. Naturally, when the news of India’s flop show in the Santiago tournament reached the shores of India, all the ire of the countries hockey-lovers, hockey experts and former hockey internationals fail on the IHF and particularly on it’s chief K.P.S.Gill.
Mr. Gill who has earned great reputation as the Punjab super cop by controlling the Punjab militancy almost two decades back, has earned an enormously back reputation as the hockey chief of the country. he administers the federation according to his whims and is said to be very autocratic. He considers himself to be the most knowledgeable person around in all the matters related to hockey. He sincerely believes that he alone thinks the best for the betterment of India’s hockey. He toys with the ideas and implements policies, which have proved to be disastrous for the national team. He is at the helm of hockey affairs in the country for the past fourteen years and even after the teams failure to book a berth in the finals of the coming quadrennial mega events, feels that “there is nothing wrong with Indian hockey” asked after the Santiago set back, what corrective measures he planned to take for the revival of the game in the country, the former Punjab DGP replied, “we already have a strategy in place”. Why, then, there is no performance? Arrogant and audacious as ever, Gill’s reply was, “we don’t have instant coffee machine to get results. It takes time to regain your position. We have put the process in place and the results will take some time”. As if fourteen long years at the helm of affairs were not long enough for Mr. Gill. Hence the IHF chief hastens to add, “I give myself two to three years [more]”.
In his efforts to play down the monumental failure at Santiago he announced that the defeat in the final was the result of “one bad day” and “that day we played 10% of our potential”. Over and above, according to Mr. Gill we were undone by “umpiring assaults” at Santiago. It may be pointed out here that complaining against umpiring in international meets concerning India is a favorite tune for the IHF to harp on. With such beliefs and statement from the IHF chief himself it is not difficult to conclude that the future of India’s hockey is not at all safe in the hands of Mr. Gill and his cohort. Those who are clamoring for Mr. Gills immediate resignation from the post are termed by the latter as “just professional mourners”.
Author: Subhash Dey
copyright: openarticlesubmission.com
Related posts:
