​ Revival of UP's hockey nursery will serve to lift India’s game

Lucknow: For thousands of hockey lovers in Uttar Pradesh, as also across a medal-starved country, watching Allahabad’s Danish Mujtaba in India’s light blue colours on the royal-blue astro-turf at Rio’s Olympic Hockey Centre evoked more pain, than pride. Not because he couldn’t finish on the podium.
For, despite much hype, a medal chance for the Indian team was beyond the domain of realism.As millions of fans religiously glued themselves to their TV sets to watch India’s matches, the talented forward seemed more a crumbling edifice of a once-rich hockey heritage. And with this realization, came the pain.
And here one is not talking about the players who stirred the hockey world by their sheer genius -- two names pop up instantly, Dhyanchand and KD Singh ‘Babu’. Here, one refers to the rich harvest of players from UP’s sports hostels and college. In fact, the state once was an unofficial incubator for Indian hockey.
In a country where the word ‘system’ triggers nation-wide scorn, UP had a ‘system’ that produced more than 60 international hockey players at its peak – with 13 of them Olympians. That system is still much in place today – with more funds, support and exposure. But the output is dismal.
At best, UP’s sports hostels and colleges are producing players that turn up on the hockey field only to land up a lowly government job under the sports quota. At worst, most fade away unheralded, without showing much potential for being world-beaters.
As the pain of an early ouster from the Olympics slowly subsides, TOI found the National Sports Day, celebrated on the birth anniversary of ‘hockey wizard’ Dhyanchand, an apt time to reach out to UP’s hockey players of international repute, requesting them to look back at the glorious past and then at the road ahead. All of them are products of UP sports hostels, and though may not be feted by the media, as the media often does with even under-achievers, they are all masters of their craft and positions.
Our one-line request was: “It would neither be gloating over past glory, nor a rant for ‘paradise lost’.” We requested them to take a hard look at the past and look for answers as to why a well-run system that was producing talents year after year has now run dry? And whether there was any realistic chance of a magnificent revival?
While all the players exuded optimism about a revival, they were equally unequivocal about a void in present-day hockey – a sport administrator like KD Singh ‘Babu’, who helmed UP’s hockey during its golden hostel days. The “passion” with which ‘Babu’ looked after this incubator till his death in 1978 was a major force-multiplier that made up for all the shortcomings of the system, they say.
‘Babu’, the only Indian to have won the Helms Trohpy for being world’s best sportsperson, was director of sports for over a decade. During this period, he set up Lucknow sports hostel in late 70s and Lucknow sports hostel in 1975. Olympians like Syed Ali, Mohammad Shaid, Virender Bahadur, Ravindra Pal Singh, MP Singh, Sujit Kumar, RP Singh, Shqeel Ahmad were are all products of this system that continued to run for a few years after his departure along the lines drawn up by him.
But somewhere around the late 1990s, it lost way. Last heard, the Lucknow Sports College was in news for an admission scam, and one has to rack one’s brains to recall the name of the last Olympian the sports hostel has produced.
“Passion for the game is what is lacking. Running hostels and coaching youngsters is now just a job which they get paid for,” says Sujit Kumar, an Olympian with more than 250 international matches under his belt.
So how does one bring another administrator like ‘Babu’ into the game, or infuse “passion” again? “It has to be a long-drawn process. There is no dearth of funds from the government. What is needed is execution,” suggest former Olympians.
“We have to search for talent from far-off pockets, run camps across the state, and hold more age-group tournaments to offer exposure and, of course, create jobs for talented players, so that they don’t migrate (from the state),” they say.
Indeed, there was a time when several organisations, like Indian Airlines and Indian Railways, would heavily bank on products from UP hostels to firm up their bench strength. With UP hockey falling on bad times, these teams too have lost their sheen.
There were also times in the 1970s and 1980s when no Indian team would be complete without at least half-a-dozen players from UP. “In the 1981 junior world cup, 12 out of 16 players were from UP,” says Sujit, adding: “In 1982 at the Kolkata Nationals, when we counted there were 72 UP players in other teams, who migrated because of jobs and various other reasons.”
If only those times return – if only the game regains its lost glory in its ‘home’ state, it will only serve to enrich Indian hockey.