Phir Dil Do Hockey Ko - The World Hockey Cup 2010

Phir Dil Do Hockey Ko was the slogan of the Hockey World Cup 2010 held in India. Hero Honda, the sponsor of the world cup tried its level best to pull crowds to stadium and also to attract the TV crowds. Three big names from different fields, none of them related to Hockey were promoting the world cup. In my opinion, the Hockey World Cup 2010 was fairly successful for both India and FIH. India did not perform badly and there were crowds in the stadium and also there were TV audience.

After the end of all of India’s games in the World Cup, I asked myself few questions.

Do we have a national level of tournament for Hockey like Ranji trophy for cricket and Santosh trophy for football?

Do we play Hockey in school and college level as in other sports?

Is Government of India doing something to improve the condition of Hockey?

To my surprise the answer to all the questions were NO. We have not produced a Hockey legend for past 20-30 years. Except Dhyanchand, we do not remember any Hero in our National Game. Though we had many greats but the young Indians do not know any of them.

I came to know from my elders that once Hockey was played in schools and colleges. That was the time when India had its glorified days in Hockey. We won Olympic golds and World Cups more than once and with ease. Even if we did not finish as the best, we always finished well. That was the golden era of Indian Hockey.

The trends in the game changed and the use of artificial grass and few changes saw the decline of Indian Hockey. For many years we did not have a single ground in India where artificial grasses were used. We started losing more matches than we won. The interest of the common man started shifting from the game as they could not accept such decline. Hockey, the game which was a popular game in 60s and 70s started losing its popularity. Even schools, colleges and organizations stopped playing Hockey. Come 2009, forget about winning a gold we could not qualify for the Olympics. We were happy that a new breed of boxers and a shooter were winning medals for us but we forgot that our national game is being played in such a big event and our team could not qualify for it.

FIH, the board for world hockey tried from its end to revive Hockey in India. The 2010 Hockey world cup was held in India and I am happy that our performance was satisfactory. Let’s accept the fact; India was never a favorite for this world cup. India was ranked 12th in world ranking when the world cup started. In my opinion finishing on 8th position is not a bad result. We won against Pakistan and could have won against South Africa also. Though we lost more games than we won we did fairly better than 2006 World cup where we finished 11th. With no games being played at national level, with no games being played in basics structure, with no support from Government and with no current day legend if we can achieve a better position than last time and with signs of further improvement there is hope of doing better in future, I believe Indian Hockey has done relatively better than what was expected. I congratulate the team for achieving this feat and I will definitely say – Maine Dil diya Hockey ko.