he Indian Hockey Federation has announced that Rajinder Singh is the coach of the national team. He would be assisted by Narendar Singh Sodhi and A. E. Brient, along with trainer P. Sampath. All four were part of the team that won India the Junior World Cup in October 2001.

What is the proof that Rajinder Singh is indeed India's national hockey coach? Is there a letter of appointment from the president of the IHF? Is his tenure specified? Does he have a monthly salary? Is there a performance bonus specified? Does he get to choose his team or will he be 'presented' with a team that someone else chooses? In short, what are the powers vested in India's national hockey coach?

Presented below are 4 examples (Australia - men, Malaysia - men, Australia - women, New Zealand - women) of the professional manner in which teams are selected by the national coaches, with zero interference from the federation.

The 2002 men's and women's Australian hockey teams were selected purely on the basis of performance in the Australian Hockey League (AHL). The teams were announced by the respective coaches (Barry Dancer-men, David Bell-women) after the finals of the AHL. The president of Hockey Australia was not present, the secretary of Hockey Australia was not present, it was the coaches alone who announced the team, the captain and vice-captain of the squads.

Similary, the 2002 New Zealand women's team was selected by their national coach Jan Borren. The president of the New Zealand Hockey Federation, Ramesh Patel, not only had no say in the issue, but also was not present at the announcement of the team.

The boss of Malaysian hockey is their coach Paul Lissek. The selection criteria for the players is performance in the Malaysian Hockey League. Lissek has personally watched around 70% of the league matches. He is the sole authority to name the probables, not the president, not the secretary. Those were the terms under which he joined as coach of the Malaysian team.

Now look at the totally laughable and incompetent example of the Indian Hockey Federation, where the president (K. P. S. Gill) and secretary (Kandaswamy Jyothikumaran) are the self-appointed chairman and member of the Selection Committee.

How in the world are they qualified to select a team? How can a single tournament (U&I Champions Trophy) comprising 12 teams be the basis for selecting players? How can probables be chosen before even selecting the coach? How can the Chairman of the Selection Committee (K. P. S. Gill) have a role in the selection process without having watched a single game of the tournament?

There were 3 All-India tournaments one after another in April - Beighton Cup (Kolkata), U&I Champions Trophy (Bangalore) and the Bombay Gold Cup (Mumbai). Ideally, the coach should have watched the knockout stages of all these tournaments before deciding on the probables list.

Newly appointed coach Rajinder Singh has to be careful not to end up as yet another coach hired and fired by the vision-less and merit-less duo that run the Indian Hockey Federation.

an the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) spare just Rs. 10 lakhs per year for 4 annual awards - Player of the Year for men, women, junior men and junior women for the domestic season. Cannot a part of the so-called 3-year Rs. 3 crore deal with team sponsors Castrol benefit the best players of India's domestic season.

The FIH has started this practice in 1998, honouring the best players of the FIH-sanctioned tournaments every year.

Many national associations, including England and Australia, have a similar tradition of honouring their nation's best. For example, the awards for the 2001-2002 domestic Australian season, for men, women, junior men and junior women, were as follows:

Award	Gender	Category	Player
Player of the Year	Men	Overall	Brent Livermore
		AHL	Zain Wright
	Women	Overall	Louise Dobson
		AHL	Louise Dobson
Jr. Player of the Year	Men	Overall	Liam de Young
		AHL
	Women	Overall	Angie Skirving
		AHL	Emma Meyer

While many All-India tournaments do give out their own tournament-specific awards, it is the responsibility of the IHF to reward consistent performance for an entire domestic season.

Also, the IHF is the only major body in the world that does not maintain any sort of player statistics. We have no idea at all of the number of matches played by our internationals, goals (including hat-tricks) scored, their country-wise record or even venue-wise record.

Contrast this with the Board of Control for Cricket in India that maintains the following detailed statistics for all its players: 

Category	Statistics
Batsman	Matches, Innings, Runs Scored, Average Highest Score, 100s, 50s, 0s Not Outs, Run Outs, Catches
Bowler	Matches, Balls, Runs Conceded, Wickets Bowling Average, Best Figure, Hat-Tricks Bowled, Stumped, Catches

The IHF's lack of vision and foresight can be seen from its following sorry record:

• No Annual  Player Awards for the Domestic Season
• No Kind of Player Statistics Maintained Whatsoever
• No Yearly Calendar of Tournaments With Dates/Venues
• No Federation Website or even Monthly Newsletter
• No National Hockey League (Jr./Sr./Men/Women)
• No Paid Professional Coaches Hired on Contract
  
  

ack in the 1980s, a cricket match between Somerset and Hampshire in the English county league would see Vivian Richards and Joel Garner match up against Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall.

Fast forward to 2002. 12 Australians are playing for 12 different counties in England, which reflects the current dominance of Australia in world cricket. 3 of the Australians are even captains of their counties. How much has cricket's power base changed from the 1980s? - there is not a single West Indian playing county cricket this season.

Move over to golf. World number 7 golfer Vijay Singh of Fiji had this to say to aspiring Indian golfers, "The Indians have to play abroad. Though a player like Jeev Milkha Singh plays in the Asian circuit, Indian players cannot improve unless they participate in the much more competitive European or American circuit."

The relevance for Indian hockey players is as follows - since the IHF does not have the guts, vision, money or desire to come up with a National Hockey League, it is up to talented Indians to take the initiative and play in the lucrative foreign hockey leagues.

As usual, Dhanraj Pillai leads the way for India. This mercurial forward has played for 7 different clubs in his illustrious career, in cities like London, Stuttgart, Lyon, Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur. He is presently playing for Arthur Andersen in the Malaysian Hockey League, along with Len Ayyappa. The IHF should play an active role in placing promising players, especially juniors, in the Australian, English and Dutch hockey leagues.

Not only players, even coaches have understood the importance of foreign exposure. India’s World Cup assistant coach C. R. Kumar has signed a 1-year fully-paid contract with the Sabah Hockey Association (SHA) in Malaysia.

Kumar has been appointed as their technical consultant, and will prepare a 5-year development plan for hockey in the state. SHA secretary Ajaib Singh Mann said that they hoped to negotiate for a longer contract with Kumar.

Sources said that Kumar made an emotional statement to his local team in Chennai prior to his departure. He reportedly said that he was “very disheartened by the way things have developed after the World Cup, and that he was leaving in disgust.”

The Victorious Punjab Police Team, Photo Courtesy - The Hindu

he 107th Indian Oil Servo Beighton Cup was held at the Mohun Bagan and the Calcutta Cricket & Football Club grounds, Kolkata, from March 21 to April 4.

Punjab Police and Central Reserve Police Force made it to the final, with the following match results:

Date	Punjab Police	CRPF
April 1	drew with Indian Airlines 1-1	beat IHF Juniors 2-0
Apr 2 (semis)	beat PSB 2-1	beat Indian Airlines 3-2

In the final played on April 4, Punjab Police, coached by former India captain Pargat Singh, defeated CRPF 3-1 to win the tournament. Sarabjit Singh, Gabbar Singh and skipper Daljeet Singh scored for Punjab Police, while Surinder Kumar Vashist pulled one back for CRPF. Punjab Police received the winner's prize of Rs. 1 lakh.

This was the third victory for Punjab Police in 3 final appearances, while on the other hand, it was the third runners-up trophy for CRPF in 3 final appearances. Punjab Police had earlier won the Beighton Cup in 1966 and in 1997.

This is the first major national title for Punjab Police this year. Punjab Police had 3 players - Kanwalpreet Singh, Jugraj Singh and Daljeet Singh - who represented the country in the recent World Cup.

he 2nd Raghavendra Itigi Memorial hockey tournament for the U & I Champions Trophy was held at the Karnataka State Hockey Association Stadium, Bangalore, from April 6 to April 16.

Defending champion Punjab Police and Indian Oil Corporation made it to the final. Their match results were as follows:

Date	Punjab Police	Indian Oil
April 6		beat Tamil Nadu 2-0
April 8	beat CISF 3-2	drew with Indian Railways 3-3
April 9	beat Tamil Nadu 4-1
April 11	beat Air India 2-1	beat CISF 1-0
April 12	beat Indian Railways 5-2
April 13		beat Air India 3-2
April 14	lost to Indian Oil 0-3	beat Punjab Police 3-0
Apr 15 (semis)	beat Karnataka 4-2	beat Indian Airlines 8-7 (TB)

In the final played on April 16, Punjab Police crushed Indian Oil 6-0 to retain the U&I Champions Trophy. Punjab Police scored thrice in each half - Baljeet Singh Dhillon scored twice, while Tejbir Singh, captain Daljeet Singh, Sarabjit Singh and Gurjant Singh contributed a goal each.

Note that in a league match between these very same teams, Indian Oil had beaten Punjab Police 3-0. How can there be a turnaround of 9 goals in the match results in barely 48 hours? It was apparent that the league match was a farce, with the result contrived to suit Punjab Police.

In the awards distribution, players from the two finalists were left out due to their wheeling and dealing during the league stage. The following prizes were awarded:

Award	Player	Team	Prize
Best Goalkeeper	Bharat Chetri	Karnataka	Rs. 25,000
Best Full-back	Khalco	Army XI	Free Air Ticket
Best Half-back	Vikram Pillai	Air India	Free Air Ticket
Best Forward	Sameer Dad	Indian Airlines	Free Dinner
Most Promising Player	Praveen Kumar	Tamil Nadu	Computer
Player of the Tournament	Arun Rawat	Karnataka	Rs. 75,000

n the just concluded U&I Champions Trophy, defending champion Punjab Police, who had won 4 matches on the trot, suspiciously lost to Indian Oil 0-3 in their last league match. Irate spectators threw stones at the Punjab Police team because they felt Punjab Police was playing to lose, so that they could meet Karnataka and not Indian Airlines in the semi-final.

Punjab Police deliberately shot wide off the target despite having open opportunities to score. This sparked disturbances from the spectators, who resorted to stone, brick and bottle throwing. A senior official of the KSHA, Mr. Sundar Rao, was injured in the stone throwing. He had to be rushed to hospital where he had four stitches. 

The match was interrupted for some time and the state police was called in to maintain order over the crowd, as well as over their police brethren from Punjab. How ironic it was to see cops policing the cops.

Punjab Police's Baljeet Singh Dhillon, in a fit of anger, even threw his stick into the crowd. Punjab Police coach Pargat Singh behaved abominably and his bodyguard made inciting gestures with his sten gun, an action which could have horrendous repercussions.

For this blatant misuse of his official privilege, Pargat Singh deserves to be banned from Indian hockey. What unsporting behaviour from these 2 players Pargat and Baljeet, who between them have been the the past 3 Olympic hockey captains of India.

With a coach like Pargat and a captain like Baljeet Dhillon, and with the team's high-handed behaviour in recent matches, Punjab Police should be boycotted until it can put its house in order.

The Punjab Police team is especially unwelcome in Mumbai. In the early 1990s, in the final of the Aga Khan Gold Cup in Mumbai, the burly giant Jagdev Singh broke the knee of an Indian Airlines forward. Mumbai's sports loving crowd was so incensed that the fans spontaneously stormed onto the Bombay Gymkhana field. The Punjab Police team ran for their lives into the dressing room and the final was abandoned.

In May 2000, the organisers of the Guru Teg Bahadur Tournament in Mumbai stated that the Punjab Police team had not been invited for the tournament as "their behaviour on and off the field was not up to the mark."

In 1999, after losing the final of the 48th All-India Police Hockey Championship in Delhi, Punjab Police's Manpreet Singh lashed out at umpire A. K. Sharma with his stick. This was in retaliation to a penalty stroke that was awarded by the umpire in favour of BSF. Manpreet Singh was banned from playing any grade of hockey for three years.

Things got so bad that 20 top national grade I umpires took a decision in 2000 not to officiate in matches featuring Punjab Police in the wake of their continued bad behaviour with umpires.

What a contrast this present Punjab Police team of Pargat Singh is to the team of the 50s and 60s, when under the under the guidance of Ashwini Kumar and Balbir Singh Sr., Punjab Police won domestic hockey titles all over the country based on their talent and skill, rather than through their boorish antics and aggressive behaviour. 

Sameer Dad of Indian Airlines Scoring in the Final
Photograph Courtesy Jewella C Miranda of Rediff

he 40th All-India Bombay Gold Cup was held at the Mahindra Hockey Stadium in Mumbai, from April 15 to April 26. The tournament was organised by the Bombay Hockey Association, with State Bank of India as the major sponsor.

Winners of the last two editions of the Gold Cup, Punjab Police, was a notable omission from the list of participating teams.

4 teams withdrew from the Gold Cup tournament at the last minute - Rock Rovers (Chandigarh), Border Security Force (Jalandhar), Indian Oil Corporation (Delhi) and Meerut XI.

Air India and Indian Airlines made it to the final, with the following match results:

Date	Air India	Indian Airlines
April 20		beat Corps of Signals 5-1
April 21	beat ONGC 3-2
April 22		beat Karnataka 2-1
April 23	beat CISF 6-4 (tie-breaker)
Apr 25 (semis)	beat PSB 3-2 (golden goal)	beat Tata Sports Club 4-0

In the all-airline final played on April 26, defending champion Air India (Mumbai) retained the Bombay Gold Cup by beating star-studded Indian Airlines (Delhi) 4-2 via the tie-breaker. The teams were locked 1-1 at full-time and at the end of 15 minutes of extra-time.

Indian Airlines, with 7 former and current internationals in their ranks, drew first blood in the 3rd minute when Sameer Dad scored off Virender Singh's pass. Anil Aldrin's penalty-corner conversion in the 51st minute restored parity for Air India.

In the tie-breaker, Vikram Pillai, Surinder Kundu and Tushar Khandekar were on target for Air India, while only Sameer Dad was able to score for the losers.

Air India was coached by Darryl D'Souza. The winning team was awarded Rs. 1 lakh, while Indian Airlines took in Rs. 50,000. The final was shown live on Doordarshan.

The find of the tournament was 18-year goalkeeper Adrian D'Souza of Air India, a product of the Air India Hockey Academy. Adrian had brilliant saves in the semi-final and final, and was rightly chosen among the probables for the upcoming senior hockey camp for the Indian tour to Australia.

The Sports Journalists Association of Mumbai awarded the following prizes:

Award	Player	Team	Prize
Best Full-back	Khushmeet Singh	Air India	Rs. 5,000
Best Forward	Shivendra Singh	Tata Sports Club	Rs. 5,000
Best Team		Air India	Rs. 11,000
Player of the Tournament	Khushmeet Singh	Air India	Rs. 5,000

Most of the local teams in the Bombay Gold Cup were eliminated by the quarter-final stage itself - Western Railway, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers, Indian Navy, Mumbai Port Trust, Mumbai Customs and Central Railway. Tata Sports Club made it to the semi-finals, while Air India went all the way to win the tournament.

he 24th men's Champions Trophy will be held in Cologne, Germany, from August 31 to September 8. The participating teams are Australia, Germany, India, Netherlands, Pakistan and South Korea. India qualified for this elite event by virtue of winning the Champions Challenge in December 2001.

India's schedule is as follows:

Date	Time (local)	Matchup
Aug 31	2:15 pm	India vs. Netherlands
Sep 1	12:15 pm	India vs. Germany
Sep 3	3:15 pm	India vs. Australia
Sep 4	5:45 pm	India vs. Pakistan
Sep 6	5:45 pm	India vs. South Korea
Sep 8	-	Finals

While India has never won the Champions Trophy, Pakistan last won it in 1994. Pakistan has never won the Champions Trophy on foreign soil.

Photograph Courtesy : Stan Salazaar's Hockey Library

he Photograph of the Month for May features the 1932 Olympic gold medal winning Indian hockey team. Shown on the victory stand is the captain of the Indian team, Lal Shah Bokhari. He would later join the newly created country Pakistan in 1947, and serve as its ambassador to Sri Lanka.

Wrote one Los Angeles newspaper on the Indian team's superiority, "The All-India field hockey team which G. D. Sondhi brought to Los Angeles was like a typhoon out of the east. They trampled under their feet and all but shoved out of the Olympic stadium the eleven players representing the United States."

The venerable Los Angeles Times wrote, "The Americans looked liked a junior team and were disjointed. The Indian forwards made lightening flashes, and both Dhyan and Roop were an inspiration to the side."

A cartoon published in the Evening News of India showed Dhyan Chand's stick in the form of a cobra, and Dhyan Chand whistling in front of it like a snake charmer.

The Viceroy of India sent a cable congratulating the Olympic champions. It read, "I am delighted to learn of the splendid victory of our hockey team. Please give all members of the side my warm congratulations upon retaining the world championship."

f Indian cricket has the cola wars, English football has the telecom wars. The world's richest club, Manchester United, signed a deal in 2002 with mobile phone operator Vodafone for a 4-year 35-million pounds deal for English football players to wear Vodafone branded jerseys.

Manchester United's rival and current English premier league leader Arsenal have signed a similar sponsorship deal with Vodafone's rival MMO2. Arsenal will use the O2 branded shirts at the start of the 2002/03 season in August. The deal is said to be worth around 6 - 10 million pounds over a 2-year period.

While English football is raking in all the money, English hockey is lurching towards bankruptcy. A Special General Body Meeting of the English Hockey Association (EHA) will be held on May 4 to decide on how to deal with the losses of £700,000 over the last two years, in addition to owing Value-Added Tax of £506,000. 

EHA's income and expenditure figures are as follows:

Income		Expenditure
Club Affiliation Fees	£600,000	Staffing	£500,000
Sport England Grant	£450,000	Competitions	£300,000
Sponsorship	?	Regional Network	£750,000
TOTAL	£1050,000	TOTAL	£1550,000

The EHA has no assets, and the National Hockey Stadium at Milton Keynes is run by a charitable foundation. EHA is planning to ask the 4000 affiliated clubs to pay a levy of £150 for each team they have, in addition to a 5% increase in club registration fees.

If the resolution is passed, it would raise a short-term revenue of £600,000. If this proposal fails, EHA will be unable to pay its creditors and therefore cease to function as a legal entity.

ndia's national sport of hockey may finally get its rightful place on Indian television. The IWHF is said to have entered into a contract with Doordarshan whereby it will pay Rs. 3 lakhs as telecast fees for every women's international match played by India in India.

According to stick2hockey.com, the India-USA best-of-three series is supposed to be the first international engagement to be covered by this new contract. The website reported that Sports Minister Uma Bharati is supposed to have taken up the cause with the Information and Broadcasting Minister Smt. Sushma Swaraj.

In other television news, a newly launched Sharjah-based sports channel called Ten Sports, has bought hockey television rights from the International Hockey Federation. Ten Sports has secured the hockey rights for the Indian subcontinent, to be later sold to interested parties of the region.

The tournaments covered by the agreement include the Men’s Champions Trophy (Cologne), Men’s and Women’s Champions Challenge Cup (Harare), and the Olympic qualifier hockey tournament.

Ten Sports is part of the Sharjah-based Cricketers Benefit Fund Series, which has hosted a record 191 (and counting) one day international matches in Sharjah. These matches played a critical role in raising the profile of cricket in the Indian subcontinent, with their live television coverage, exciting match results, huge cash payments to the participating cricketers, and as a bonus, film stars in the stands to provide more glamour and glitz. 

Mr. Abdul Rehman Bukhatir is the Chairman of Ten Sports, while Chris McDonald is the Chief Executive. We hope that Ten Sports and Abdul Rehman Bukhatir will do for hockey what they did for cricket, thus raising the profile of this second most popular sport in the Indian subcontinent.

D. N. Sinha is this edition's Visitor of the Month. He recalls a nostalgic occasion from his life when he saw Hockey Wizard Dhyan Chand.

This occurred more than half a century ago, sometime around independence. I was studying intermediate then. I was returning from an inter-university athletics tournament somewhere in central India (Jabalpur or Bilaspur).

When the train halted in Kharagpur, I happened to see posters for a match later that evening between an Army team led by Dhyan Chand, and an Anglo-Indian team (or maybe Bengal Nagpur Railway team) from Kharagpur.

Even though my final destination was Visakhapatnam, I got down from the train at Kharagpur. I made my way to the Railway ground and had the immense satisfaction of seeing the Wizard in action. I do not recall the final result, though I remember that there were around 20,000 spectators for the match. Dhyan Chand also gave a solo exhibition of his stickwork on the special request of his fans.

I did not have any money to go back home to Visakhapatnam. It so happened that one of the persons in the stadium was a guard on the night train leaving for Visakhapatnam. He accommodated me in the guard's compartment for the journey back home.

That remains the only occasion when I saw Dhyan Chand. I treasure this memory of Dhyan Chand from a bygone era of Indian sports when India ruled the hockey world and his very name used to draw crowds to the stadium.

he first ever foreign tour by any Indian sports team was the 1926 tour of New Zealand by the Indian Army hockey team. This was followed by another tour of New Zealand in 1935. India's record in these tours was as follows:

Year	Played	Won	Drew	Lost	Goals For	Goals Against
1926	21	18	2	1	192	24
1935	48	48	0	0	584	40

This 1926 Army tour started India's hockey story, and with it, Dhyan Chand's legendary prowess. Dhyan Chand burst onto the world hockey scene that year by scoring over 100 goals on India's debut tour. In the 1935 tour of New Zealand, Dhyan Chand scored a massive 201 goals in just 43 matches, a possible world record.

Decades later, when Dhyan Chand's son Ashok Kumar toured New Zealand, an old goalkeeper on a wheelchair met him. He told Ashok, "Your father was a marvel. I saved his first shot at goal by diving full length to my right. The second shot at goal was far to my left. I dived and saved yet again.

Then Dhyan Chand said - if you save my next shot, I will stop playing hockey. True to his word, on his next possession, Dhyan Chand hit a scorcher right over my head to the centre of the net. The gap between my head and the bar was very little but the ball went through into the goal."