When every village boy is given a platform to show his skill in sports

I myself belong to a humble town called Khadki, a short distance from Pune, where I first played the game on kucchha surfaces. When I came to Mumbai, all I knew was the rules. I had speed, but didn’t know how to cash in on it. So, if I got this far, it’s because of my hard work and dedication, but also because I was lucky to get an opportunity to learn and improve early in my career.

That opportunity—to play with the trained city teams, to contest at higher levels, to learn from the stars—should be available to every lad with a hockey stick in his hand. If he’s good, he deserves that opportunity. That, to me, is India Empowered.

And that, I think, is still a faraway dream as far as hockey is concerned.

Take Maharashtra, for example. Kolhapur, Solapur and the adjoining areas have an abundance of talented youngsters keen on hockey. But they don’t have school championships, no talent scouts visiting remote villages, no chance to ever be spotted and picked for a state’s side or even a local club.

Then there’s the yawning gap between infrastructure that global stars enjoy and the sorry excuses we make do with at home. There are only a couple of Indian centres—Hyderabad’s Gacchibowli Stadium and Chennai’s Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium—that have world class hockey facilities, including comfortable rooms, sufficient training space, a swimming pool and all the things that go in the making of a global sporting centre. All other centres, even those cities that have produced big stars, have grossly underutilised resources. If hockey is to be empowered, at least two Astroturf surfaces in every city are a must.

Then there’s the question of how to empower players dealing with the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). Over the years, the IHF has been run by a handful of people, autocracy style. Everybody sees senior players; stars and even Olympians stay mum while big bureaucrats who run the game are around. Where’s the transparency in the selection process?

Earlier, in the mid-nineties, people like me, Pargat (Singh) and other senior members conferred with the officials when a team had to be picked. That trend has ground to a halt.

All countries that take their sports seriously, and certainly their national game, stress on professionalism in management, training, infrastructure, marketing and development of the game. India Empowered to me is when Indian stars can sign on the dotted lines of contracts with foreign clubs knowing they’re satisfied with the terms and conditions, that they negotiated the best deals themselves, knowing they did not sell themselves short. Why does the IHF have to play go-between every time a foreign side shows interest in one of our young stars?

Injured players need to be looked after, with assistance for surgeries, top quality medical aid and a concrete recuperation programme. Rajeev Mishra, a fine centre forward from Varanasi, another small town, was lost to Indian hockey thanks to one such injury, and to poor care from the IHF.

The IHF also needs to make attempts to rope in better and more corporate sponsors. Endorsements are a lush option-after all, hockey players like Viren Rasquinha, Gagan Ajit Singh, Kanwalpreet Singh are handsome young men and can peddle brands as well as the cricketers or movie stars. What they need is to first become recognisable faces, for which the IHF should permit some level of candidness with the media. A blanket ban on talking to the press is ruinous for the game.

What I dream of is an Empowered India where every village boy has a platform to showcase his skills, where every good player has a fair chance of making it big, where every star has a youngster to mentor and a mentor to thank.