Sticks on our mind

And to get the necessary airtime,it is corporate India that has to take the plunge in promoting the sport. Hero Hondas new campaign is one of the first to take on this challenge. With the Hero Honda campaign we were going into un-chartered territory. Hockey has never had big sponsors, says Rohit Ohri,head at JWT,Delhi,the agency behind the campaign. We used Priyanka Chopra,Virendra Sehwag and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore since they were part of the Hero Honda celebrity list. We didnt use hockey players because when you show players,it means we are talking about victory. But what we were communicating was more about the game and getting people to participate in it, he says.

Hockey is the game when you dont want to think cricket. Anil Dua,senior vice-president,marketing and sales,Hero Honda Motors says,We need to go beyond cricket and golf. Association with sports should not be limited. Then we thought why not support the national game. The World Cup was a brilliant opportunity,it is a game for the masses. The company has organised an inter-school hockey tournament for school children across 19 cities as part of the campaign.

But this is clearly not enough. Though the support for the game is trickling in,corporate India does not invest in anything but cricket,says Anirban Das Blah of KWAN,an entertainment marketing company that also does sports management. When it comes to endorsements,Pankaj Advani didnt get any and even Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore managed to get one or two after his wins. It is tough to get an agency to sign on a young athlete. It is tough to get corporate India to support a sport apart from cricket. The brand ambassador they want to sign on has to be visible. And the sport you watch the most on TV is cricket. The rest of the sports people are barely seen on television. Then there is the occasional Sania Mirza,who has a certain reach apart from cricket, says Blah.

Everyone definitely loves a winner. Indias downfall in hockey coincided with its rise in international cricket. After the loss to Pakistan in hockey at the Asian Games in 1981,it was Kapil Dev who lifted the countrys spirits and the cricket World Cup in 1983,also the time when television took its hold on the nation. Cricket has been at the pinnacle of sport viewership since. Cricket,though,is not the villain.

Everyone likes to watch a game where we win. There was a time way back in the 1970s and the early 1980s when we just won and won. After that,we didnt do too well. Then it was cricket where we did well. When you start winning,people get excited. See the attention that boxing,weightlifting and shooting is getting now. People like to see winners, says Jaideep Sahni,writer of Chak De! India 2007,a film that revolved around hockey and gave the sport a catchy shout-out.
Sahni also feels that the biggest competition to hockey is not cricket or the athletes from other nations. It is our own disinterest and apathy for the sport which should change. We have to start watching it. Even that one ad is making a good step. But it will take time, he says.

Viren Rasquinha,a player who has retired from international hockey,is now chief operating officer with Olympic Gold Quest,a venture set up by Geet Sethi and Prakash Padukone to support Indian athletes. It will happen if we have good management and a good team in place. The hockey team has to do well on an international level. There have to be more games played in India itself and there have to be positive role models. And TV holds the key to make hockey players famous. We have to create faces. The Indian Hockey Federation has to make that happen, he says.

The federation has managed to keep the game in a comatose state,says Blah,who worked earlier with Mahesh Bhupathis sports management company,Globosport. Blah says,For example,when the Premier Hockey League started around December 2003,it made hockey popular. But the federation didnt work well with ESPN. Though it was a good idea and meant to run for long,they didnt pull it off. It shut down after 3-4 years. Even today when we see the game on Doordarshan,it is with the same camera angles used decades ago. No one is going to watch a sport when it is shown in this bland a way. Though hockey is an exciting sport,we would rather watch the winter Olympics than an event being held in our country, he says.
The shot in the arm for the sport could be in the form a private-public partnership,feels Rasquinha. Hockey needs a corporate model where merit and professionalism matter. Players,coaches and selectors have to be made accountable.

Blah adds,How did the Chennai Open last for over 10 years? How has Procam International,the sports management company,managed to leverage the marathon? It has been through tie-ups with private players. That is what the federations have to focus on. Not by having a bureaucrat who has no experience in the field of trying to sell a sport. The federation needs a plan. That is the only way there will be some transparency in the system.
But while the sport where we last won a medal at the Olympics 32 years ago dribbles through getting sponsorships,fighting corruption,new players and maybe hitting a goal with the TV ratings,the question still stands: Why should I watch hockey?