Indian hockeytronics….

S. Charandeep Singh
Hockey is an outdoor sport played between two groups of 11 players each, on a turf or a hard mud surface with hooked or bent sticks and a hard ball. The object is to drive the ball into the opponents goal by hitting it with the stick, the game is also called ‘Field hockey ‘ to distinguish it from ‘ice hockey’, which is a very similar but much faster game played on the hard frozen surface of ice.
The stooping low performance of the Indian mens hockey team in the 2008 Bejing Olympic qualifier had kept the team out of the Olympics after eighty years of dominance and had painted an ignominious picture but the young team in the recent qualifier had shown great skill under their Australian coach Michael Nobbs and have qualified for the London Olympics after emphatically defeating France by eight goals to one. Indian womens field hockey team also could not qualify for the London Olympics but their win in the 2002 commonwealth games had inspired the making of bollywood hit film chak de india that has inspired millions of Indians across the world.The recent win of the mens hockey team has raised high hopes in the minds of every Indian. This perhaps has made them curious to know more about hockey.
Historically, it is difficult to state with any certainty when or where hockey was first played however there are evidences that some form of game resembling modern hockey was played nearly 4000 years ago. In ancient Egypt even on the wall of a tomb built about 2000 B.C at Beni hasan in the Nile valley near Minia, there is a drawing which shows two people ‘Bullying’ as in modern hockey. Before the discovery, it was believed that hockey originated in Persia in 500 B.C .The reason for this is that polo was played by the Persians about that time and it was thought that hockey was a direct descendant of this game .It seems more likely , however that polo was a refined and more aristocratic variation of hockey, which was played earlier.From Persia the game travelled to Greece and was later taken up by the Romans. The Romans developed their own version of the game, which they called pagnacia’ which was played with a bent stick, the ball was made of leather, packed with feathers. Some form of hockey, though called by different names, was also played in several European Countries many centuries ago. In Ireland it was called ‘Hurley’,the people of Scotland had their own version of the game which they called ‘Shinty’. Both these games were played with a ball made of cork or rubber covered with layers of string wrapped round it. The stick was made of oak wood and was fashioned by the players themselves by cutting off a piece of wood with a natural bend at one end.
In France the game was popular in the 15tn Century. The French called their game ‘Hoquet’ which is the old French word for the land staff or crook, hooked at one end, used by shepherds. It is assumed that the word ‘Hockey ‘was derived from the French word. Another country where hockey took early root was Holland, which had its own brand of the game, which was played with a large , rather soft ball . But the country to which modern hockey owes its origin is England, where it was popular towards the middle of the 16th Century. This game was called ‘Bandy’. Even earlier, around 1425, another form of hockey known as ‘commock’ or comocke’ was played in England .The name was perhaps derived from the word ‘caman’, the Gaelic for bent stick’. The first clear mention of hawkie’ or ‘hockie’ to give its original spelling , occurs in 1838.
As hockey became popular, efforts were made to draw up proper rules and further changes occurred in 1875.An important land mark in the game, and the real birthday of modern hockey is January 18, 1886, when the British Hockey Association was born. King Edward VII, then Prince of wales, became the first president of the association. By then Hundreds of hockey clubs had been formed all over England and they all became members of the British Hockey Association.The most important rule, which has made hockey what it is today , was the introduction of the striking circle or ‘D’ as it is called .The author of this rule was Edgell Westmacott of the Teddington Hockey club, who is generally regarded as the father of modern Hockey. Another far reaching improvement was made in 1889 when a cross bar replaced the tape across the two goal posts. Three years later, the use of a goal net made the work of the umpire easier.
Hockey was introduced into India by the British . In the early years, it was confined almost exclusively to British and Indian soldiers and was especially popular among Indian sepoys . It was in fact their main sport. The nurseries of Indian Hockey were the hundreds of cantonments in the country, where it was almost the only sport of the Indian Sepoys. The greatest players the game has ever known, the Fabulous Dhyan Chand, whom the world called a ‘wizard ‘ learnt hockey as a sepoy.
The birth of Indian Hockey, as far as civilian teams are concerned, dates back to 1885, when the first hockey clubs were formed in Calcutta. At about the same time , the game spread to Bombay , which also became an important hockey centre. The first important national Tournament was the Beighton Cup Tournament which was inaugurated in Calcutta in 1895. The next year the Aga Khan Tournament was started in Bombay. The Punjab took to hockey in a big way and from the army units it spread to educational Institutions and was included in the Punjab University Sports tournament on 1903. The same year Lahore Gymkhana Club held the First Open Hockey Tournament in the country .
Hockey was included in the second Olympic Games in paris in 1900. But, the match was played as an exhibition event. Hockey was included in the Olympic games, for the first time as a competitive sport, in the fourth games held in London, The first -ever Olympic Hockey match was played between Scotland and Germany on October 29, 1908. Another 12 years went by before hockey again figured in the Olympic games at Antwerp (Belgium) in 1920 . However the decision of the international Olympic Committee to revive the hockey tournament, beginning with the IX Games in Amsterdam in 1928 gave India the opportunity to stake her claim for world honours.
On February 19, 1928 the Indian Hockey Federation named a team of 13 players and three more who were studying in England were selected to join the team Finally on march 10 , the 13-member team sailed from Bombay but the event evoked little Public interest. Only three people -two officials of the Indian Hockey federation and a solitary journalist -were present to see the team off. From these insignificant beginnings began the glorious and exciting saga of Indian Hockey, with the first ever national team leaving the shores of India in quest of International glory. And so at last to the Olympics India played her first Olympic match on May 17 and defeated Holland 3-0 in the final on May 29. Thus the birth of a new Olympic champion took place in Amsterdam.
The news of Indian success at Amsterdam spread like wild fire in every nook and corner of the nation and was received with great joy and pride by Indian at Home. To Millions of people in India, the Olympics were until then only a name. Indian Victory thus not only helped the growth of the Olympic movement in India, but also established hockey as the country’s national game.
In 1932 India went to los Angeles to defend the Olympic title and trounced the Americans 24-1 in the finals. India excelled and Defended the Olympic title for the second time at the Berlin Games (1936) riding on the very crest of world fame and at the peak of excellence .Leading from the front was the ‘wizard’ Dhyan Chand who was making his farewell appearance in the games. By a curious coincidence, but at the time of hardly any consequence, India met Germany in the final on August 15, which 11 years later saw the birth of India as an independent Country. While the British were responsible for introducing the game into India, especially among Indian Sepoys, they did not look upon India’s International participation with favour. The British Hockey Association was conscious of the superiority of Indian hockey and it was not prepared to risk defeat at the hands of a subject people .For this reason the British Avoided contact with India in international matches for long time. Great Britain kept away, on one pretext or another , from the Olympic games Hockey Tournament from 1928 to 1936. This was rather surprising as England had won the gold medal in the two earlier Olympics in which hockey was included. Even when the Indian Team visited England on its way to the 1928 Olympic games, the British did not field a national team against it. however in their first meeting in the final of the London games India beat England and retained the Olympic Gold Medal.
For today’s sportsmen who are playing for free country, it perhaps is difficult to understand the feelings of Indian sportsmen who had to play under a foreign flag but the high sense of patriotism and dedication of the Indian team was touchingly demonstrated when the team assembled in the dressing room prior to the match. Before taking the field all the players reverently saluted the tricolour of the Indian national congress which their assistant manager had taken with him to Berlin.
The scene shifted in 1952 to Helsinki, Capital of Finland, . Once again India main interest was centered on the fortunes of the hockey team.Holland challenged the Olympic champions in the Final but lost 1-6 and india won the Olympic hockey crown for the fifth time in the row. Apart from the honour of leading his country to victory in the Olympic, the Indian Captain , ‘Babu’ had the distinction of becoming the first Indian to be awarded the helms Trophy, America’s Nobel prize for sport. The award was made to him as “the best Sportsman of Asia in 1953, and the best hockey player of the world in the 1952 Olympics”. The Indian team to the Melbourne Olympic games (1956) was captained by Balbir singh. Playing in the final in the Sixth Olympics in succession India clashed with Pakistan for the first time since the partition of India and in a hard-fought match India won by one goal, scored midway through the second-half by R.S Gentle from a short-corner.In the 1964 Tokyo games the first Olympics on Asian Soil, India made a bold bid to regain her supremacy in world hockey.and defeated Pakistan to regain the title. India entered the Olympic Hockey Tournament for the ninth time in a row in the Mexico City Games in 1968. The match was awarded to India by the Jury of the International Hockey Federation . India met Australia in the semi Final but crashed to a 1-2 defeat and were unable to enter the final for the first time in 40 years.but India regained the title in the 1980 Moscow olympics and thus indian men’s hockey team remained dominant in Olympic competition winning eleven medals in twelve olympiads between 1928 and 1980 including six successive gold medals from 1928-1956 and in 1964 and 1980 besides one silver and two bronze medals.
Over the years, Hockey has become increasingly popular and today there are thousands of hockey clubs in the country and several thousand active players. The game is specially popular in educational institutions, the Railways and the services. The number of Competitions have also multiplied and there are more than 200 recognized tournaments played at the National , state and district levels as well as competitions for schools colleges, universities, Railways and services.
Although it was the British who introduced hockey to India, once the Indians took over the game they revolutionised the techniques of play. Making hockey a game of skill and agility with their short , controlled passes and remarkable ball control , the Indian hockey team dominated Olympic after Olympic and for several decades India Remained Unbeaten In a game which, though born in England, flourished in India They not only covered themselves with glory but also made every Indian hold his head high in the arena of world sport. Thus the time has come when our team must show their strength , the Indian hockeytronics and regain our old glory in the field of hockey.
(The author is a KAS officer)

Follow our WhatsApp channel