Not too long ago,
From 1928 to 1956,
remained unbeaten in the Olympics garnering six gold medals in a row. To date the Indian team has won a total of eight gold, one silver and two bronze medals in Olympics. India
However, for the last two decades, we could only see continual decline in Indian hockey. Today, Indian Hockey reached to a point from where it cannot go any worse. We all know that
Indian hockey plumbed new depths on Sunday when its national team were bundled out of the Asian Games in the group stages, marking the first time in Games history the Indians will return home without a medal.
Sunday's 1-1 draw with
meant they finished only third in pool B and missed out on the semi-finals. South Korea Their loss earlier in the week to lowly-ranked
China proved crippling and it isKorea andwho progress to the last four. China
This is indeed a sad day for Indian Hockey. Millions of people in
This is not a sports blog and I would not go into details about Indian performance in this Asian Games. However, I would like to say that Indian government has to reconsider its sports policy. I feel that there should be a complete overhaul of Indian Hockey. Professional people with sports management background should have stronger role in the running of Indian Hockey. The government should allocate more funds and nurture talent in the school level.
What do you think?
China may be lowly ranked but expect them to improve across all Olympic sports in the leadup to the Beijing Olympics as the government pours a lot of money into sporting programmes. Indian hockey needs to find corporate sponsorship rather than government handouts.
It's interesting to note that since that period of Indian hockey dominance both cricket and football have emerged as professional sports for kids to aspire to while hockey has not really progressed in terms of popularity or prize money.
Posted by: Vincent | December 11, 2006 5:47 PM | Permalink to Comment