Indian hockey players’ united front against the authorities is a chak de moment.
Somewhere in the middle of the crisis that plagued Indian hockey this past fortnight, the lackadaisical attitude of the game’s administrators revealed itself in an altogether different setting. Earlier this year, a popular newspaper carried the story of how former India goalkeeper Baljit Singh’s pleas for help to Hockey India had fallen on deaf ears. Baljit had suffered an eye injury during practice in July 2009 and while the sports ministry under the leadership of MS Gill had borne a portion of the cost of Baljit’s treatment abroad, Hockey India was happy to play truant, even when it had apparently promised the moon to Baljit.
It is in this context that one needs to view the recently concluded standoff between the authorities and the players. How were 22 players supposed to buy Hockey India President, Ashok Mattoo’s commitment of resolving the payment issue at the end of the Hockey World Cup in March, when the plight of one of their own stares them in the face?
Assurances, promises or commitments are fashionable words in the corridors of Indian hockey, but seldom lead to anything actionable. Further, when the players asked for something more concrete than shallow lip service, Hockey India’s top brass seemed happy to politicise the whole issue by questioning the players’ approach of putting money ahead of country. The irony of the standoff was that the revolting players had only asked for what was due to them for their performances last year and not for any kind of advance. Ask any working class professional, world over, if he would react any differently if his payment was delayed to this extent?
Film writer Jaideep Sahni had once remarked on the subject of his film — Chak de! India, “In India when you decide to play sport you immediately become an underdog, and when you decide to play sport other than cricket, you become an underdog twice over.” That these 22 players were offered a mere Rs 25,000 each, owing to a sad state of Hockey India’s finances, as against the stated demand of Rs 4.5 lakh per player, is an unfortunate vindication of Sahni’s statement. Hockey India may be an ad hoc body, constituted hurriedly after the dissolution of the Indian Hockey Federation in 2008, but its infancy cannot be an excuse for its lack of revenues. The crisis may well have been pre-empted if the men entrusted with running it had been doing their job.
Hockey players in this country are a hapless lot. They have won us eight Olympic titles (the most by any hockey playing nation) and one World Cup, but there is precious little done to preserve their legacy. The legendary Dhyan Chand died in penury, and one shudders to think of what has happened to lesser players. In the current scenario, basic facilities, like availability of drinking water at the practice venue, are often hard to come by. Then there are individual cases like that of Baljit, a player on the rise one day, a forgotten footnote on the other. And yet, scores of young men take to the game in the hope of giving the average Indian something to be proud of. This is sport at its purest, bereft of material glamour, fraught with challenges. Man challenging the odds on the strength of his skill.
The revolting players have shown remarkable maturity in the eye of the storm. In times, where the call to fragment the nation along cultural and ethnic lines only gets louder, these men put aside their inherent differences in the pursuit of their objective. They have shown statesman like nous by seizing the opportune moment to raise their voice. There has been no shallow rhetoric, no cowering down to the powers that be, only a unity of purpose. In the battle for self respect, they have come up trumps. Irrespective of their showing at next month’s world cup, this was truly a chak de moment for Indian sport
The writer is a Mumbai-based freelancer
