As you enter the Hockey Club of Pakistan Stadium in Karachi, you can see beautiful picture frames capturing the glorious moments of Pakistan hockey and also photos of visiting and home teams that have played in Karachi down the years. It’s like a mini-museum and the fascinating pictures kept me captivated.In fact, there is one group photograph of the India and Pakistan teams that participated in the Indo-Pakistan series last year in Karachi. It brought back lot of good memories for me because that was my first match on Pakistani soil.In India, only the National Stadium in New Delhi has a nice picture gallery — but that too needs to be updated. I think it’s a wonderful concept and every major hockey stadium in India should do something similar, so that fans and players can walk down memory lane and relive those historic moments of our great hockey culture.I have played more than a few times now in Karachi and Lahore, and I’ve been most impressed with the way both the stadiums have done up their off-the-field facilities. It’s not just the picture galleries, of course, it reaches the more important, elemental levels.For example, the dressing rooms and toilets for the players and fans are clean and well maintained. In India, only the National Stadium, the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad (built for the Afro-Asian Games) and the Major Radhakrishna Hockey Stadium in Chennai, which will host the upcoming Champions Trophy in December, have dressing rooms, toilets, rooms for the officials and media which are of high standard. In all other stadiums in the country, players prefer to change on the stands itself. Having a nice warm shower after the game is beyond the imagination. And the less said about the toilets, the better.India has hardly been able to get international tournaments in the last few years other than the Afro-Asian Games and the Holland test series, both of which were played at the Gachibowli Stadium, and of course the Indo-Pakistan series held last year. Playing in front of our home fans is a must if the game is to be taken to the masses.But we must realize that in order to host international matches and tournaments, facilities like clean dressing rooms and toilets are the bare minimum. Later on we can progress to things like a decent press box, media facilities, VIP seating, clean galleries for the spectators.I sincerely hope that the respective associations in the bigger venues like Mumbai, Bangalore, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Shivaji Stadium in New Delhi get cracking in this regard. At least then we will not be embarrassed by sub-standard facilities. I must add in this regard that the facilities at the Chennai Stadium have been beautifully done up and Chennai will definitely be a proud host of the Champions Trophy, 2005.On the subject of promoting the game, the top Indian hockey players definitely need to be doing a lot more, especially amongst kids, be it attending school functions, or inter-school matches or exhibition matches or clinics all over the country. Kids between the ages of 8 and 15 years have very impressionable minds and they need heroes and role models to look up to.I remember when I was 15 years old, there was an exhibition match on my school grounds in Bandra between the then Indian team and former internationals. For me, it was a dream come true just to shake hands with Dhanraj Pillay, Mukesh Kumar, Anil Aldrin and Dilip Tirkey.My buddy Adrian D’souza also tells me that when he was 12 years old, Olympian Gavin Ferreira was the chief guest for a sports day function at his school. Adrian ran up to Gavin and took his autograph on his certificate, something that he has treasured till this day. My point is that if each player can make a good impression about hockey to 10 kids, maybe they will tell their friends and family and maybe hockey will get 100 new fans and who knows, maybe a new Dilip Tirkey or Adrian D’Souza will be born. Sounds bit far fetched, but it all starts with a dream!
