Boria Majumdar
This is not an usual column. Rather, it is a statement that should have been made months earlier by anyone interested in Indian sport. Just days earlier a report shocked the sports fraternity of the country by announcing to us all that our hockey players are on strike. They hadn’t received salaries for a while and hence had refused to train at the national camp in Pune with less than a month and a half to go for the world cup in Delhi. As our media made common cause with our players, a section of the press and some experts suggested a strange comparison. It was widely reported that while our cricketers are millionaires, our hockey players are forced to beg for pennies from the establishment. A well known former player even defended this dismal state of affairs suggesting our performance in hockey has been downhill and hence the players have no right to ask for monies when training for the world cup.
First things first- the BCCI is an autonomous body and isn’t dependant on the government or the sports ministry for support. It has gone out and corporatized the game, sought out sponsors, created stars out of the performers, injected value into the game and has converted Indian cricket into a multi-million dollar industry. It is solely to the BCCI’s credit in being able to do so over the last decade and a half. For the record, the Board’s balance sheet at the end of the fiscal year in 1992 showed a deficit of 62 lakh rupees. The opulence we now know and take for granted is a product of the last 17 years.
To blame cricket for the sad plight of hockey is to miss the woods for the trees. Such a comparison is a non starter and by doing so we are actually trivializing the issue and compromising our players even more. If the Kotla fiasco was a national shame, the hockey revolt, which has now been doused by Hockey India officials, is an even greater shame. For our national sport to reach such a nadir is a condition that the entire country should be ashamed of, especially when it comes at a time when we are bracing ourselves to host the Commonwealth Games and the hockey world cup.
The solution is simple. Keep cricket out of the equation for cricket or the cricket administrators have no role to play in this. Rather, do what Pankaj Advani has suggested, follow the cricket model in trying to corporatize your own sport and make money for the protagonists. Hockey India will do well to resuscitate the PHL, which did much for the players for 2 years before it was forced to shut down for want of funds. They will do well to sort out the imbroglio over Hockey Punjab, which clearly smells of politics at a time when the team led by Rajpal Singh is preparing for the world cup.
In fact, it is time for Hockey India to go a step further. Perhaps introduce graded payments like there is in cricket or announce cash incentives that will inspire the players to go that extra yard. Or more interestingly, try and take the radical step and privatise the sport of hockey. There are many entrepreneurs waiting to pick up the baton and run with it—it is time we use their services. Indian hockey deserves much better than what it is getting at the moment.
May be its time for the BCCI to act as well. If it can pay the AIFF 25 crores in trying to give the sport a fillip, it is time to do so for hockey, more because we still nurture a realistic chance of making the podium in hockey, a chance non-existent in football.
