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Contrast here two sports which our National teams are playing right now in different parts of the world. On the one hand we have our Hockey team striving hard to regain our lost glory going great guns in the FIH Pro League being played in many parts of the world today. And then there is our Cricket team in England going on to – in all probability – lose (they might still win though, hopefully) the World Test Championship for the second time running.
Hockey is our National Sport and we hold a World Record of winning the highest number of Olympic Gold medals – eight – that is yet to be erased. Over the years European nations did everything from changing the surface on which the game is played, to changing the rules wholesale to destroy our sub-continental style of playing hockey. Result, the sport went into a decline and lost all support of spectators in our country.
Then came Mr Navin Patnaik, Chief Minister of one of the poorest states in our country, Odisha and ‘sponsored’ the game, no less, with all facilities and financial support as well. The players are doing full justice to this support by giving their best today.
By contrast, cricket was never short of popularity and support and more importantly the rules never got changed to the extent of affecting the style of play as in hockey (as there is hardly anything to change). The financial support that was available right from the start also went up by leaps and bounds after our historic World Cup triumph in 1983 and the popularity of this game too rightly skyrocketed.
But then came the IPL which changed everything. The amount of money being poured into this, is in my opinion, nauseating. No problem at this as well. But when this comes in the way of our players playing the game at the International level, it has to be questioned. Our cricketers seem to have lost focus, concentrating more on the IPL rather than international commitments where our nation’s honour is at stake! We have not won an ICC trophy since a decade (when we won the ‘Champions Trophy’ in 2013) as experts and commentators keep reminding us. Cricketers themselves keep saying “Test cricket is the original form and we should never stop playing it…”
They recognise the importance of practising the kind of game required for this form but still insist on playing the shortest form of the game till the very end (and are probably even encouraged to do by the BCCI) – like they’ve done on both occasions – even when they were to play the World Test Championship. When the great Kapil Dev commented on this last year he was roundly trolled but the obvious is visible right now!
One might argue that the hockey team has also not brought any laurels over all this time and it took 41 years to win just a bronze medal at the last Olympics. But we need to remember, our hockey had to learn the new style of play from scratch! We have been attuned to learning the old style from the grassroots (school) level and changing to the new at this level requires a large number of coaches with appropriate and adequate knowledge of this style, something that is yet to happen fully and will take some time.
By contrast, in cricket, as pointed out earlier, nothing much has changed in the style of playing the game except for the slight adaptations required when going from the longer format to the shorter, which are easier. Only the monetary compensation has changed (increased dramatically for the shortest) and that, I feel, is leading to distraction among our cricketers.
Hockey is getting all the support now from the Central government through several schemes and also the Odisha Government. Due to this, there are some regulations in place to ensure that the players play at their optimum in International events.
The BCCI though is an autonomous body not under any government regulations and it is up to them to ensure their players play to their optimum in International commitments.
Hardly anybody watches test cricket these days (I still do, though) so the BCCI should seriously consider doing something about the great game which is aptly called ‘Test’ cricket for reasons everyone knows.
Otherwise, just scrap the longer formats in domestic cricket like the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, etc and also stop playing any International cricket. Let the cricketers play only IPL and earn their living.
Sounds drastic but that’s the way I feel.
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