The recent run of successes of the Indian men's hockey team — a gold in the Asian Champion’s Trophy, silver in the Azlan Cup and a decent quarter-final showing at the Rio Olympics— has refocused the spotlight on a game that holds considerable transformative potential for the country. The team’s improvement has demonstrated the steady gains that can accrue even from relatively small investments in sporting infrastructure and also holds the promise of ending the long run of erratic performance that has been the bane of Indian hockey since the seventies. As with any industry, sport relies on infrastructural and institutional resources for its “human capital” to perform at optimal levels — this has been the key lesson from the sporting domination of the world’s rich countries. In that sense, Indian hockey has been one of the modest beneficiaries of post-nineties economic growth.The introduction of Astroturf stadiums — the absence of which has been long lamented as the key reason for the decline of Indian hockey — and, after some false starts, the expansion of a local tournament that features international stars, present and past, from Australia, the Netherlands and Great Britain have added some lustre to the game.
In the two-year-old Hockey India League, many more Indian players than the lucky few who qualified to play in the European or Australian club tournaments now play alongside world-class talent. All of this has gone some distance towards putting India on a more level playing field that contributed so significantly to loosen the stranglehold the developed countries had acquired over this most attractive of team sports.The Indian men’s team world ranking of six, ahead of pedigreed hockey nations such as England and Malaysia, is a testimony of these small successes.
The spin-off benefits of these incremental developments can scarcely be overstated. It means that more and more young talented men and women can consider hockey as a viable profession — much the way that the Indian Premier League has done for cricket. The creation of an ecosystem for the extremely watchable Hockey India League has, for instance, wrought transformations on India away from the big urban centres towards eastern India, which has so far been a major catchment area for hockey talent. Places such as Raipur, Bhubaneswar and Ranchi have acquired sparkling Astroturf stadiums that are capable of hosting international tournaments, including, next year, the hockey World Cup. The derivative benefits from such developments, as in the hospitality industry, have been evident in these cities that are located among India’s less prosperous regions. No less significant is the enormous potential for promoting gender equality, given that women’s hockey has been steadily growing in these regions over the past decade.
For all that, the Indian institutional set-up for hockey remains poor. In contrast to the hoopla that greets Indian cricketers, Indian hockey stars are rarely feted or, indeed, rewarded in the same way. This is not just a function of consumer preference but of poor marketing by the Indian hockey administration. For example, winning the Asian Champion’s Trophy is a big deal, but there was little publicity beyond the news reports. There is little of the corporate sponsorship interest that characterises cricket. The Hero group has rendered sterling service in underwriting the Indian Hockey League, as have corporate groups such as Wave, Jaypee and the public sector Mahanadi Coalfields that own these teams. It is heartening that Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has chosen to use his own considerable earnings to co-own one of the star teams, the Ranchi Rays. But all this is still small beer. In contrast to the hundreds of Astroturf stadiums in Germany or Australia, India has only a handful. The training facilities below national level remain abysmal. All these issues urgently need to be addressed if India is to regain its place as a star hockey nation. It’s time for the national game to acquire some national attention too.