A TRAGEDY

The Indian hockey team’s defeat at the hands of Great Briton in the finals of the Olympic qualifiers in chile made sure one cannot see our national hockey team in the Beijing Olympics this year. This is nothing less than a tragedy.

Anyone who witnessed the match will concede that the Britons were far more incisive and impeccable in their approach leaving very little for the Indians to do.The Britons inspired lot.

The fact that india will miss the Olympics after 18 successive appearances from 1928 is a bitter pill to digest. The signals of such a possibility were clear for years. Everything was either ignored with illogical reasoning.

It is a collective; from administration to government, from players to coaches, and, of course, the media, whose hunger for negatives for well over a decade contained the poison to demoralise every section.

There are several arguable factors that could either be addressed more pragmatically, or transparently. The choice and frequent change of coaches, constant shuffling of squads, and programming events without adequate recovery time for players from fatigue are among the few.

The results shown however have been disturbingly negative, be it the defeat against China in the Asian Games or the failure to win the qualifier. It is astonishing to look back on how a single defeat against China has almost transformed the course of history for Indian hockey. India should have notched up the qualifying spot at Doha at least by finishing as the finalist.

Now that the black chapter is etched in the history for posterity, it is time to make a critical, detailed evaluation of the causes that led to this trauma.