Former hockey greats unite to express concern about poor state of the sport
It was the road not taken by the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) that had forced the former greats to protest the decline of Indian hockey on the streets in the Capital on Wednesday.
After the Indian team’s failure to win a medal in the Doha Asian Games for the first time, their angst was certainly expected. However, for the first time the former Olympians had, after failing to elicit any response earlier despite appealing to the President and Prime Minister against the irrational functioning of the IHF, taken to this path to highlight the desperate situation of hockey.
Around 17 former Olympians including stalwarts from the ‘golden era’ of Indian hockey had reached here from different parts of the country. They were supported by a hundred odd fans from the Nehru Hockey Society in the one-km march from Ranjit Singh overbridge (near ITO) to Jantar Mantar.
There, the Olympians pleaded in front of the media that the government and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) should step in, to save Indian hockey from disgrace. More significantly, the former greats blamed IHF president KPS Gill for the fall of the game and demanded scrapping of the present IHF management, sacking of Gill and the immediate appointment of a panel of experts to improve Indian hockey.
The Olympians were taking a memorandum to this effect to the sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyer and IOA president Suresh Kalmadi after the march.
A similar concern about Indian hockey’s dismal performance had been expressed in Doha by the IOA chief Kalmadi, who is usually reticent about matters involving the IHF. When DNA spoke to him on Wednesday Kalmadi said he was waiting for the Olympians to submit the memorandum first.
“I will react after receiving it. Let it come to me first.” But the IHF was really at the receiving end on Wednesday from the Olympians. Commander GS Nandy, who won double Olympic gold in 1948 and 1956 Games said, “If KPS Gill is not responsible then who is responsible?
It was his duty to check the slide in Indian hockey al these years.” Zafar Iqbal (1980 Olympics gold) added that “The present IHF regime was neither accountable nor fulfilling its task of producing talented players. That’s why we don’t have the likes of our earlier greats.” Former Indian captain Pargat Singh said that under Gill, the IHF had “killed domestic hockey”.
