Opinion That lone medal

The protocol,of course,is to count the golds first. On the sidelines of multi-sport events like the Olympics,the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games,however,you are bound to find folks redoing the arithmetic,and arguing that the three medals should be weighted (so many points perhaps for a gold,silver and bronze) to get a more realistic picture.

Ignore them. Gold’s gold,and its supremacy heeds the spirit of excellence that underwrites competitions. Being best in one event cannot be bettered by second finishes in a dozen others.

It may be slightly trickier when counting one gold against another. Take these Commonwealth Games. Australia are the best hockey team in the world,and as Indian coach Jose Brasa will tell you,they also play the most entertaining hockey. India,inheritors of a once proud tradition who touched their lowest point ever two years ago by not qualifying for the Olympics,know what it means to compete against the best,and not just another Commonwealth country. Gold or silver,to be locked with the keenest competitor is to be on a possible recovery curve (Australia have not dropped a match at any Commonwealth Games).

Does the medal that will be the Indian hockey team’s today compare with the cartloads being wheeled away from shooting venues,even if we equate gold for gold,silver for silver. Can we undertake the dry comparison on a ledger?

Oddly,while the question is often posed for other team sports at multi-sport events,to look at a hockey medal’s worth is not really to get into book-keeping — but to inquire into how hockey is unique amongst other team sports. Unlike any other popular team sport,hockey sorts out its heroes at multi-sport events — it is alone amongst them to hold the Olympics gold as its highest reward. Every other coveted title — World Cup,Commonwealth Games,Asian Games,Champions Trophy — is a halt on the road.

Football does not even care to allow a country to field its best possible team at the Olympics. Its greatest prizes are elsewhere,the World Cup and league titles. Basketball’s superpower,the US,actually opposed moves to allow NBA players to participate in the Summer Games,1992 onwards,for fear of the effects of lop-sided results. While Argentina nudged the US out of that complacency by taking the gold in 2004,the NBA remains a top basketballer’s field of dreams.

Cricket inhabits its own self-contained universe,and the statistics do not yield unfalsifiable assertions of supremacy. As we found out this week. To repeatedly deny Australia a Test series win in India is to keep that country’s domination in question. The sport also stands splintered into three strands — Test,one-day,Twenty20 — and the capacity of Test cricket to keep itself the marker of greatness is the most tantalising uncertainty of the game today.

Tests,in any case,do not submit to multi-nation tournaments. And while one-day internationals allowed cricket a quadrennial gathering of national teams,it’s still too unwieldy to adhere to the snappy momentum of multi-sport competition. The Kuala Lumpur experiment was a disaster,not just for reasons of crowd interest,but also for the surliness of cricket’s administrators to adjust their international schedule. In 1998,India split the team,so that one could be sent to Canada for the Sahara Cup.

Popularity of the shortened T20 format has revived plans for the inclusion of cricket,and lobbying’s been on to get it the status of an Olympic sport — always a risky thing for the reigning teams to wish for,because once that status is confirmed,China’s sport policy kicks nation-wide promotion into swing! However,the BCCI could not be persuaded to pull in its weight for the quest by making the introduction of cricket at the Asian Games a success; it cited prior commitments as inviolable.

Hockey,however,sends out its champion teams. More interestingly,it is the common pursuit of that Olympic gold,and all the preparation other competitions provide for this holy grail,that’s perhaps kept the game so responsive to changing needs. Astroturf has given hockey speed as well as immense portability. Hockey’s strained to keep itself absorbing. Rolling substitutions and the no-offside allowance made the game pacier in a way that left purists gasping at the shrinking space for exhibiting dribbling skills. But as the Australian women’s coach Frank Murray points out,going into the 2008 Olympics it was nonetheless felt that the game was getting boring. The subsequent self-pass reform took care of that,and as happens each time hockey changes its rules,the effect is a greater number of goals per match. Till the new rules become the new normal,and another change is considered.

So,watch India take on Australia this afternoon. But wonder too at the inadequate affection hockey draws for constantly changing in a never-changing quest. In a world of burgeoning options,it keeps its eye on those lone medals redolent of all its history and traditions.

mini.kapoor@expressindia.com