Zafar Iqbal (left) and Ashok Kumar (Images courtesy: Amity and Stick2hockey.com)

It was a huge honour to be sharing the same space as hockey legends Ashok Kumar, member of the 1975 World Cup winning  team, and Zafar Iqbal, who was part of the squad that won the 1980 Olympic Games gold medal. All India Radio broadcast our conversation on September 14, 2011. Our chat focussed on the Indian team’s win in the inaugural Asian Champions Trophy tournament in Ordos, China, and on the road ahead that includes qualifying tournaments for the Champions Trophy and the Olympic Games.  I started by asking Ashok if this win is another new dawn for Indian hockey.

Since the chat was in Hindi, I shall try and post a English version soon. Click on the link below to hear the chat.

Ashok_Zafar

The intense public focus on the Commonwealth Games 2010 Delhi hockey final, featuring India against world champion Australia, does not mean that the pressure will be any less on the women’s badminton stars Saina Nehwal as well as the doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa when they step on court to play their gold medal matches.

As India seeks more gold in its quest to dislodge England from the second place in the medals table, Saina Nehwal will be expected to justify the favouritism of being the top seed here. She is up against Malaysia’s Mew Choo Wong and is expected to win the battle. Yet, she will have to ensure that goes out there and enjoys playing the game just like any other.  Jwala and Ashwini will square up against the top-seeded Sari Shinta Mulia and Yao Lei but they will be under huge pressure to win since India starts the day with one gold fewer than England.

For all that, while India had picked up an unprecedented 36 gold medals at the Commonwealth Games 2010 Delhi, the whole nation will be hoping that the men’s hockey team will beat the World champion, Australia, on Thursday and provide the proverbial icing on the cake. If the team gives off its best over those 70 minutes, it can be in with a chance.

The Indian men’s team had returned empty-handed from three attempts in the Commonwealth Games since hockey was introduced in its schedule back at Kuala Lumpur in 1998. And, with sterling shows against Pakistan and England, it has landed itself with a chance to end that drought with a golden performance.

There is a collective hunger for that one gold. Can Rajpal Singh and his team fetch that? They can take heart from the fact that India’s latest gold diggers Manoj Singh and Paramjeet Samota showed no sign of pressure when they entered the ring on Wednesday evening. They rode on the crowd support to beat their respective opponents.

Of course, when the Indian teams sit down to analyse their performances, they will discover that some of those expected to win gold at home fell short.  Come to think of it, some of the metal won by Indian sports persons can also be branded as pleasant surprises.  Now, unmindful of what happens in the three finals featuring Indians on Thursday, the whole Indian contingent can take a bow for having turned in a stupendous performance at the Games.

Ashish Kumar becomes the first Indian to win a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games (Photo courtesy: PTI)

I have rarely been spoilt for choice of sporting events to watch in my 28 years as a sports writer as I have been over the past few days at Delhi 2010. The wonderful assembly of world, Olympic and continental medalists here – in swimming and shooting, cycling and athletics, hockey and tennis and a lot of other sport – has given the sports fan in me much to cheer about.

On Thursday evening, I was caught on the horns of a dilemma like never before. It was not easy to make a decision on where I spend the evening and questions kept bobbing up in head. Should I make my way to the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Aquatics Complex to watch the swimming finals and then hop across to the Talkatora Indoor Stadium to catch up with boxing action?

Or, should I head to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium to witness a whole evening of track and field action? Or, perhaps I should be at the Maj. Dhyan Chand National Stadium for India’s hockey contest with Australia. Then again, the new wrestling arena at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Complex was a good option as well.

The decision was taken out of my hand by the strong tug of the track and field competition, especially the prospect of watching two landmarks – an Indian shot putter winning a Commonwealth Games medal and the fastest 100m on Indian soil. Neither came true but compensation came in the form of a lesson: expectations can often lead to disappointments.

Come to think of it, it was the ability of champions to stay focussed on delivering their best effort rather than worry a great about the result that came through at the athletics competition. We saw that when Sally Pearson, who has concentrated on the 100m hurdles ahead of the sprint, emerged the fastest woman at Delhi 2010 in a race marred by false starts.

There was a fairly long-drawn argument that England’s Laura Turner had with the officials at the start and it would have been easy for anyone to lose focus. But Pearson, who won the 100m hurdles silver in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, stayed calm, banished thoughts of perhaps having false started herself, and sprinted to victory in 11.28 seconds.

Similarly, England’s Mark Lewis-Francis rallied from a poor start – and he said his starting block slipped – to finish with a 100m silver medal behind Jamaica’s Lerone Clarke. As he pointed out after the race, he had to run from deep within to be able to walk to the podium. The 28-year-old was quite naturally over the moon.

Indeed, the beauty of sport is that while it keeps offering surprises – and, for good measure – shocks aplenty for the athlete and onlooker alike, it holds out lessons for anyone who is ready to learn from merely watching it.

Balbir Singh Sr. was manager of the Indian team that won the 1975 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur after which Aslam Sher Khan, who scored the equaliser against Malaysia in the 1975 World Cup in and Ashok Kumar, who scored the solitary goal in India’s victory over Pakistan in the final, became heroes.

Even as India’s standing in world hockey hit a downward spiral in the modern times, the magical, if sometimes mercurial, Dhanraj Pillay emerged a huge star. It did not seem to matter to the fans that Dhanraj Pillay did not matching silverware in his trophy cabinet, except the 1998 Asian Games gold. The fact that he instilled fear in the opposition ranks was enough for the fans.

Full back Dilip Tirkey took over as the biggest Indian player but now, when India’s fan base does not seem to have eroded despite it still being on a treadmill as far as its presence in world hockey is concerned, it does not have a single player with claims of being an icon, a hero. Not one player seems to have the charisma to stand out in a crowd.

Of course, you can argue that it is good in some ways as no player must be larger than the singular unit that his team can be. But the fact is that nearly all sport in India is personality driven and every sport needs its heroes to make an impact in the collective mindset of the sports loving people of this wonderful nation.

So, how can an Indian hockey player – or players, if you please – be built up as a sporting icon?

I am convinced Team India needs to play more often – and win even more often than it does now – at home so that its players can be seen on TV if they are to ever become icons. It was heartening to see news TV channels speak with the Indian players after each game. If such interactions get more frequent, it can only be good for the evolution of their image.

Of course, one of the basic criteria for a player to be built as a star is for him to perform incredibly well – and over a sustained period of time. And on the basis of what we saw in the FIH World Cup where India played six matches, there are not too many who have it in them to wear the mantle of the super star and draw crowds.

I wish Shivendra Singh had not sat out of two crucial matches after starring in India’s 4-1 victory over Pakistan. He must be the one player closest to being a big draw, with his speedy runs and his poaching skills in the rival circle. Full back Sandeep Singh was the other player but he disappointed with both his defending skills and his inability to convert penalty corners.

I guess we will have to wait for a while before we have a super star emerging from the ranks of the Indian team and until that happens, India hockey will have to settle for being in the penumbra of the sporting firmament behind Indian cricket, English Premier League and other European leagues, Formula One, world golf and the professional tennis tours.

Oh! For another Dhyan Chand or Balbir Singh Sr or Aslam Sher Khan or Ashok Kumar or Dhanraj Pillay. Oh! For another Pargat Singh or Dilip Tirkey.

This piece was written for www.stick2hockey.com

The Indian team at the start of one of its FIH World Cup matches

One of the spin-offs in a career in which writing and commenting on cricket seems to have taken precedence – despite having been to Olympic Games, Asian Games, SAF Games and numerous other non cricket sporting events – is that I have not been in touch with a whole generation of Indian hockey players.

A quirk of fate offered me a chance to make some headway in that direction when I got to spend some quality time with some players last week. In fact, I got to chat up with a couple of them from the Indian squad that took the field in the Hero Honda FIH World Cup on a 15-minute drive and we were able to exchange notes on a number of contemporary issues facing Indian hockey.

One of the pet peeves of the contemporary player is that their predecessors keep insisting that they do not work as hard as they did in their time. “I believe that if we had played in their era, we could have played three matches in a day. Such was the pace at which hockey was played then,” one of the players told me.

Now, that may be debatable but the players – like the modern cricketers who believe that past players are making a living by commenting on their performances – do have a point about some of the former stars being a little uncharitable towards the present squad. For I have always believed that former players have a responsibility towards the sport that they played so passionately and follow with similar intensity now.

If I tended to agree with the spirit of that statement I was in disagreement with what came next – and it had to do with payments. “We don’t get compensated for the amount of work we put in at training,” the player said, pointing out that unlike in the past when National camps were not year-long affairs.

“Players could spend time with their families and turn out for their respective employers’ teams in the domestic circuit. Now, we do not spend much time at home and find it hard to play for our employers,” he said. I pointed out that money was not the reason they had picked up the hockey stick the first time and said I believed their recent strike was unjustified.

“You talked of dues when you were not contracted to get any amounts from your Federation,” I said. “I am not against you making money but I disagreed with your method. If you were seeking player contracts and graded payments, you should have got into negotiations with the Federation and convinced them like the cricketers did a few years ago.”

To their credit, both players did not show any signs of animosity and heard me out when I explained how the then captain Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath spent close to two years convincing officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India that graded payments needed to be introduced.

“I agree that we started playing because we were passionate about it and did not expect to be rewarded for pursuing our passion,” he says. “But having coming along and having proved ourselves to be the best in the land, is it unfair to expect to be compensated? And, don’t you think many youngsters would be drawn to the game if we make it lucrative enough?”

Of course, I said. And since we had arrived at our destination, it was time to drop them with promises to stay in touch and share notes and ideas.

This piece was written for www.stick2hockey.com

It would be an understatement to say that India dominated much of the match – throwing in a number of attackers to raid the South African circle, playing a bit more aggressively than it did in the past few games. And yet, for a large part of the second half, it did not seem to find that one nudge that would slot the ball home – until just five minutes were left for the final whistle.

The irony was showcased tellingly when India earned its second penalty corner in the first half. For the second time running, Arjun Halappa was unable to stop the ball for Sandeep Singh to try and drag-flick it. But, he recovered to be able to pass the ball to an unmarked Diwakar Ram whose powerful drive went in off goalkeeper Erasmus Pieterse’s pads to earn India a 2-1 lead.

We had a greater dose of such a paradox when India scored a fabulous goal when Sarvanjit Singh capped a delightful bout of passing but that had to be disallowed since South Africa had asked for a video referral and secured a penalty corner. The irony was greater because India’s coach Jose Brasa had said a couple of days ago that umpires must not stop play for referrals.

And it became more stark when the video referral paid dividends for South Africa and it was awarded a penalty corner. Lloyd Madsen made no mistake with converting that and pushing his team 3-2 ahead 13 minutes into the second half. The crowd could not believe that India’s goal had been reversed and South Africa given the chance to take the lead.

It was the quarter-hour spell after that which reinforced the cruel irony. India virtually pitched camp in the South African half and did everything but score. The ball was deflected in to the goal twice but on both occasions, the only sticks it connected in the scoring circle were South African and the wild cheer from the home fans were only false alarms.

I was a bit surprised that with the forwards not finding the scoring touch, Brasa did not try the unusual but not unique tactic of making a defender play inside the rival circle to try and deflect the ball in to the goal. Time after time, Rajpal Singh, Prabhjot Singh and Gurwinder Singh Chandi did not make contact with the crosses and yet no innovation was tried.

For quite some time, the threat of having to finish fifth in the group behind South Africa and play-off for the ninth place were looming large. And then, the stadium heaved a collective sigh of relief before bursting out in applause when Shivendra Singh pounced on a rebound off Pieterse’s pads and reverse flicked it in to salvage a draw.

Indeed, the irony was never more apparent.

This piece was written for www.stick2hockey.com

Indeed, it was a poignant sight that will be etched in my mind for a long time. India had lost its second successive match by a 2-5 margin and yet many hundreds of its disappointed fans lingered on to cheer the team. The warm gesture after India was outplayed by Spain on Thursday night showed that the sport will find support in the country.

The stadium was packed well before India’s key contest with Spain was due to start and it was quite an experience again, hearing the crowd sing the National Anthem as one and with pride. But its throaty support to the home side was not good enough to lift the side to be competitive until it was too late.

Clearly, there were not just 15 Spaniards working overtime to stop India’s dream of finding a winning sequence. The home team took the ground with enormous baggage – for 35 years and eight editions, their predecessors had tried and fallen short of the semifinal at the FIH World Cup – and this side was expected to alter the course of Indian hockey’s destiny in one tournament.

This was the match that could pitchfork India among the contestants for the semifinal berth; this was the game that would set it up for a battle with the vastly improved England; It was not going to be easy, especially since Spain has always been a tough opposition and since it has been a while since India has played opposition such as Australia and Spain in the span of 48 hours.

The pressure was simply too enormous. Shivendra Singh’s enforced absence due to a two-match ban left the team without sting. Besides, hard as the young Gurwinder Singh Chandi tried to show that he belonged in this league, India’s lack of strike power upfront came through clearly. It was not long before the domino effect was felt at the other end.

India’s most consistent Indian players – Dhanjay Mahadik and Bharat Chikara – made uncharacteristic mistakes in defence and left the team staring down the barrel of the gun at the end of the first half.  The two goals that the side conceded were both defensive lapses that let Albert Sala and Pol Amat score unhindered.

It was always going to be difficult for India to play catch up, even after Sandeep Singh scored four minutes into the second half. Spain answered the challenge with two goals in as many minutes and it was all over bar the shouting. Sandeep Singh scored a second time to spark some hope but Spain was in control and pumped in a fifth goal towards the end to seal victory.

For a squad that boasted of three drag-flickers, India’s penalty corner conversion rate – scoring just once from the six chances – left it bruised. Sandeep Singh found the target once and caused the crowd to find its collective voice one more time but he will be the first to admit that the Spanish goalkeeper Francisco Cortes was more than equal to the task of denying him.

It is not as if there were no positives; there were some. The Indian side mounted a steady fightback in the second half and kept pressing for goals – even if it came up against resolute defence. The team was able to keep fighting till the end, something that we have not known many Indian hockey sides to do.

Yet, in the end there was disappointment for the vast majority of the 15,000 hopeful fans who packed the wonderful stadium and many trooped toward the exit gate when Spain scored its fifth goal with three minutes left. Yet, the sight of a few hundreds staying back to cheer the Indian team was heartwarming. There is hope yet for Indian hockey.

This piece was written for www.stick2hockey.com

Indian ace Deepak Thakur believes the team is mentally strong to take on Pakistan in the opening game of the FIH World Cup

Live everyone else, I am excited by the approaching India-Pakistan contest in the Hero Honda FIH World Cup 2010 at the Maj. Dhyan Chand National Stadium in Delhi. It has been a little over six years since I sat in the packed stands and cheered a 3-1 India victory in the Afro-Asian Games final in my home town, Hyderabad. The goalless draw that I saw the teams play out at the Morris Brown College ground in Atlanta at the 1996 Olympic Games has faded into the recesses.

For someone who has found the sporting rivalry between the two neighbours endearing, I cannot help think of how India will have to be mentally strong to face the twin pressures that bear down on the team in the World Cup competition. It is known to be among the slow starters in the big competitions and, to make it doubly challenging, the opening game is with Pakistan.

May be it is just a myth that India starts slowly but let us look at the last two major events for the Indian team. India got off to a 2-2 draw with New Zealand in the Champions Challenge in Argentina in December. Earlier, in the Asia Cup in May 2009, despite goals from Prabhjot Singh and Rajpal Singh, the team lost 2-3 to – hold your breath – Pakistan.

It does look like the home team has approached its two warm up games against Argentina and the Netherlands as part of a big tournament rather than as practice matches. I was happy with the intensity that we saw in the squad when it took on and beat the Dutch 2-1 in a practice game a couple of evenings earlier.

I have always believed that it is mental strength that makes the difference between champions and also-rans and it was but natural that when I got to talk one of the Indian team’s stars, Deepak Thakur, our conversation focused mainly on the team’s mental preparations for the big game that lies ahead.

Apparently, the team has kept things simple. It has had some sessions with a psychologist. But more importantly the events away from the hockey pitch have brought the players together like little else could have. “Above all, we have a solid coach (Jose Brasa) who is very good at keeping us motivated,” Deepak Thakur said.

“We have put behind us the defeats by Pakistan in the Asia Cup in Malaysia and the Champions Challenge in Argentina,” he said. “We realise that there is no point in letting thoughts of such reverses linger in our minds. We know our strengths and are focussed on bringing them to the fore when we get on the pitch for the opening game.”

Indeed, as far as the opening game is concerned, mind games have already begun. There has been of talk about how drag-flickers Sohail Abbas and Sandeep Singh will be key performers. And how Indian goalkeeper Adrian d’Souza exudes confidence that he can measure up to the challenge posed by the world’s most prolific goal scorer Sohail Abbas’ exceptional skills.

Typical of players of an era gone by, the greybeards talk of how the intensity in contemporary India-Pakistan matches is less than in the past. It is an unfair comment given that millions of people watch the game on television and sit in judgment now more than ever. I believe that any India-Pakistan sporting contest brings along immense stress.

And yes, even if I am not looking beyond India’s inaugural match with Pakistan, I am excited at being able to watch my first World Cup hockey competition.

This article was written for www.stick2hockey.com and appeared on that wonderful website.