The Golden Old Days:
— Between 1924 and 1956 India won six successive Olympic hockey golds.
India has achieved huge successes in hockey during its early years but later on it has only been a continuous downfall. With 8 Gold medals it has been the most successful hockey team in the world. So how come it came to a point that this hockey giant failed to even qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics? Today, again the Indian hockey team is staring down the barrel as far as qualifying for 2012 London Olympics is concerned. Lets first look at the reasons for downfall.
Reasons for Downfall:
1. Lack of proper infrastructure:
Our country does not have the basic infrastructure to support this sport. The absence of enough practice stadiums is an obstacle that our national game is constantly facing. A country like Holland has more than 440 grounds to play hockey. India does not even have 50.
Even the available infrastructure is a battle against poor conditions – right from props to the lighting, from changing rooms to bathrooms, from food to water – is pitiable.
2. HI v/s IHF:
This is the main reason behind the downfall. The entire administration is a mess; no one knows know who is in charge. Hockey India goes to a corporate with a proposal and then a few days later someone from the Indian Hockey Federation goes with a similar proposal. The prospective sponsor stunned.
Besides this top IHF officials caught taking bribes. With scandals now and then, there is a little room for doubts on absence of authencity and morals of federation. Poor and controversial selection process. Often changing of players and coaches affects adversely team’s performance.
3. FIH [International Hockey Federation]:
One cannot clap with one hand. The approach of FIH was not also good. Regular change in rules is not for betterment of the game, but to cause problems for poor Asian teams. India and Pakistan are supposed to be powerhouse in hockey and their performance did not dip overnight. Things like introduction of synthetic turf and many other things caused these poor federations of Asia to suffer.
One of the most important jobs of international sporting bodies is to promote/market their respective sport. FIFA, FIBA and ICC are doing it very well. The only international sporting body that has yet to learn about the promotion of its sport is FIH.
One of the most important jobs of international sporting bodies is to promote/market their respective sport. FIFA, FIBA and ICC are doing it very well. The only international sporting body that has yet to learn about the promotion of its sport is FIH.
4. Sponsors:
There is also a lack of sponsors in our country to support this national sport. One may say that the leading sports sponsors are too afraid to invest in what is considered a not so worthy sport but it is also an established fact that players do not perform, well often due to lack of proper amenities which can come from sponsoring. This has a dampening effect upon the quality and participation of players.
5. The Media: “Aayaram Gayaram”
The media houses are very much busy in TRP games. India's favorite marketing strategy, "Jo dikhta hai, wo hi bikta hai". Hockey tournaments are not generally telecasted on TV or internet so it does not sell.
Media has always kept its blessing hand on the hand of cricket. There are separate Tv channels dedicated to cricket such as Star Cricket, Ten Cricket, Neo Cricket etc. But there is not such any Tv channels dedicated to hockey in spite most of the Hockey tournaments are not telecasted.
6. Government’s attitude towards Hockey:
By giving very little funds and supports when it needed the most. The Government has shown clearly that its negligence and step treatment has lead to the abysmal position. The government step treatment with Cricket and Hockey can be easily seen. In recent case, the Government gave crores to each cricketer after winning Cricket World Cup but offers only Rs 25,000 to each hockey player after winning Asian Champion Trophy. Government gives little fund and interfere a lot in its matter. The corrupt politician made the system a mess.
There might be 100 more reason, but these are some of them which have to be looked into and come out with a solution to promote hockey.
Looking into the Future
In order to achieve these changes in the different levels, there are three approaches that can be chosen to drive sports towards a better future.
1. Bottoms-up Approach
Things need to happen at the lowest level and then flow up, i.e. there needs to be major changes at the school and college level to promote the sport, to attract more and more youngsters to play the game. We can easily see the cricket ground, basketball court etc but its very hard to find hockey ground in school and colleges. We need to create interest about hockey in youth and provide facilities to popularize this game.
A league system needs to be developed which acts as a medium for national team selection and for increasing the fan following just like IPL. Thus, excitement is generated which would help improve the standard of the game so that there are better players selected for the national team. This will thus lead to an improvement in the way the national team performs.
2. Top-Down Approach
Create conditions and select the national team purely on meritocracy so that the performance improves. Provide them with facilities and infrastructure to improve their game. There should be recognition of achievements and provision of more rewards. Improvement in the national team's performance will lead to a greater fan following. This excitement around the sport then can be utilized to promote the league system and help in raising revenues through the right marketing efforts and advertising. The league can act as a tool to help selection committees select the national teams. Also, with the league in place and funds coming in, systems can be placed at the school and college level to promote the sport and increase participation.
3. Effective Marketing:
Another way of promoting hockey is going by the Netherland way. And this is the best way to increase interest among the fans. Netherland has promoted hockey by ‘push’ marketing strategy and they have gained a lot from that. They started off by paying money to channels to show local games live on TV. After a period of time these channels paying the hockey association to show matches on the TV. And the association also picked the time slots before football games which turned out to be prime time view for the people. This strategy adopted by the Dutch hockey association has helped hockey very much in Netherlands.
At the league level, more private investment should be encouraged and the sports should be marketed well. The clubs should be run as business entities in order to bring professionalism into the games and there should be built-in training & coaching to help grow talented youngsters.
Conclusion:
The current state of affairs of Indian hockey is a story of mixed chances and collective apathy of various stakeholders involved. However, proper planning with long term vision can help to turn around things. In order to improve the state of hockey in India, we need changing things simultaneously at all levels. Thus, we need to generate excitement around the sport and the national team by getting them to perform better but we need to simultaneously start working on the league system to have competitions at each stage and level - Men, Women, Junior, School and College like U-18, U-16, U-14.
