Indian Hockey, returning back to the glorious past!
May 26, 2009 Entertainment, Sports
With a cricket crazy nation like ours, where from kids to grandmas are hooked to the square cuts and clean bowled, seldom do we pay much attention to our official national game-hockey. How many times have you ever heard your friends praising our hockey players, and let alone praising, do you even know the player’s names when you know what is the favorite bathroom song of your favorite cricketer?
Well I am not trying to make you feel guilty here but just talking about how your days are going to change as our very own national sport hockey is bringing back home the prestigious trophies. Recently our hockey team beat the host nation Malaysia 3-1 to bring home the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, which was the fourth such experience for our hockey team. This just happened at the right time for India would be facing the world cup challenge next year. And all our team needs right now is support from us fans, the media and the government. All three entities can together bring back the game of hockey to life.
Probably hockey needs to learn a lot from its counterpart cricket. So to begin it needs its own well organized federation like BCCI to make the sport more organized and to fill its shortcomings. The next big support has to come from the media be it electronic or print. Our hockey team has been winning in the past as much as our cricket team but still it fails to make it to the headlines, where as even when a cricketer gets married; his photographs are adorned on the front pages. So probably the media can bring about the much needed change and move up hockey as much as cricket. Well I am not saying that hockey should replace cricket, but may be the two of them could co-exist together.
When people will see or read more of hockey then obviously they are bound to get more involved in it. Also our government should not be partial towards cricket and completely ignore the national sport. I mean have you ever thought when our cricket team wins; the government announces flats, lands and huge sums of money for the cricketers whereas when the hockey players win, they barely make it to a page in the newspaper. So basically the system needs to be revamped, like government investing more in hockey, building proper infrastructure and training facilities, people taking a little more interest in the sport, media putting some extra words on the victories and I am sure soon the game can win back its well deserved position.
Tags: BCCI, Clean Bowled, Cricket, Electronic Media, Favorite Cricketer, Hockey, Hockey in India, Hockey Players, Hockey Team, Hockey World Cup, Indian Hockey, Infrastructure, Media, National Game, National Sports, Print Media, Sports, Square Cut, Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, World Cup
