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Dhyanchand has almost faded from our memory and most of us do not know who Dhanraj Pillay is. The entire nation was celebrating hysterically when India defeated Pakistan in the World Cup cricket this year. But the Indian win over Pakistan in hockey, in the Australian Men’s Challenge Cup, went unnoticed. This is the general approach towards hockey, which is deemed to be our national game. The present Indian hockey team is a fine blend of experience and energy and seems to have overcome their major worry — physical fitness. They performed brilliantly in the Australian Men’s Challenge Cup but were unfortunate not to win the tournament. India was excellent throughout the game, only in the dying hours did the Australians snatch victory. India conceded two goals in the 65th and the 70th minute. On being congratulated by the indian coach Rajinder Singh, Australian coach Barry Dancer said his team was lucky to have won the game. How do we let victory slip between our fingers is another concern for the coach and the team management. Even in the Sydney Olympics, India could have won the last league match against Poland and hence qualified for the next stage. But India lost the 1-0 lead just one-and-a-half-minutes before the game was to end. The game ended in a draw and dashed India’s hopes for a medal.

Then, there is little or no employment for hockey players these days. Mahindra has folded up its hockey team and even the Railways reduced the quota for the intake of hockey players. It is only because of this dry economic condition of players that Dhanraj Pillay had once said he would never let his son take up hockey as a career. Sylvanus Dung, who was a member of the squad that brought gold for India at the Moscow Olympics, gets a meagre pension of Rs. 2500 a month. His appeals for a job of a coach even in a school team fell on deaf ears. Need for money made him sell his Olympic medal and other medals. It is a strange coincidence that the same month Castrol withdrew its sponsorship of the Indian hockey team, the Pakistan team gained one — the National Bank of Pakistan — after remaining without a sponsor for almost a year. Indian hockey badly wants sponsors while the cricket team has an enviable surplus. Asked whether he thinks cricket has hogged all the limelight pushing hockey into the shadows, Bansal said he doesn’t believe that one game can overshadow another. Citing the example of Germany, he said though Germany plays international football with great zeal, it plays hockey with equal interest. Further, there is a lack of interest towards hockey at the grassroots level. There has been a steep decline in the number of children devoted to the game in traditional hockey playing states like Karnataka ,Punjab,Haryana and Tamilnadu . The other important factor for the disinterest towards the game is the inconsistent performance of our national hockey team in the recent past. After the winning streak was over, the people lost their interest in the game. Lawn tennis, which was never popular in India, has earned a great fan following due to good performance at the international level. The silver lining is that change of tactics seems to be working for India. In the Australia Men’s Challenge Tournament, after first losing to Australia 2-0 in the league match the side improved considerably, losing unfortunately by 2-1 in the final despite leading throughout the whole game. In the next rendezvous with Australia, which was in the Three-Nation Invitational Tour, India drew the game at 3-3. Then in the final match of the International Men’s Challenge Hockey Tournament, India avenged their previous defeat, beating Australia by a considerable margin of 5-3. So it seems the Indian side is doing their homework regularly. But what matters most, they are carrying the blackboard to the ground. In spite of all efforts by players and professionals the game is at the receiving end. The government’s indifference has to blame a lot for this decline. If nobody is interested in reviving this age-old sport which brought us golden moments at the Olympics, then why unnecessarily call it the ‘National Game’?

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