Indian Context
| Introduction | Indian Context | |
Tour Name | Tour Structure |
Indian Context | |
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| Tour Venues | Tour Logistics | Money Matters | Media Matters | |
There are certain features unique to Indian hockey that should be taken into account while planning PHL Season II.
1. Role of Public Sector Institutions
The organisations that have the biggest stake in Indian hockey - in terms of employing players, starting academies, sponsoring tournaments and winning championships - are public sector and governmental institutions. The biggest stars and the best teams belong to public sector institutions rather than to private companies or clubs.
The best winning records in domestic hockey in India belong to public sector institutions. This can be seen by the fact that Indian Airlines are 9-time winners of the men's national hockey championship, while Railways are 20-time winners of the women's national hockey championship.
Institutional teams is a uniquely Indian concept. Lufthansa and US Airways do not have hockey teams, we do (Indian Airlines, Air India). Amtrak and British Rail do not have hockey teams, we do (Indian Railways - men and women). Shell and Texaco do not have hockey teams, we do (Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum).
If you ignore the institutional component, you are ignoring the rich history of Indian hockey. Without India's public sector institutions, there would have been no Dhyan Chand (Army), Leslie Claudius (Bengal Nagpur Railway), Balbir Singh Sr. (Punjab Police), Feroze Khan (Bombay Customs), Balkrishan Singh (Railways) and Ashok Kumar/Zafar Iqbal (Indian Airlines). India would not have won any of its Olympic gold medals or its lone World Cup title.
2. League Cannot Define the Sport
The NBA in the US is a perfect example of the league defining the sport. A basketball player in the US has a limited world view - the game does not exist to him beyond the NBA.
In India, any proposed league cannot define the game of hockey itself. Indian players participate in the following tournaments, which all have their own coaching camps and selection trials:
India has a 102 match international schedule over the next 3 years, within which the PHL has to be fit in.
Therefore, any proposed league has to build a framework around the competitions already existing in Indian hockey, rather than introduce a new, multi-month, multi-venue competition.
2. Geographically Diverse Hockey Centres
Hockey's power centres in India are located away from the metropolitan areas - the tribal belts of Jharkhand and Orissa, Jalandhar and Sansarpur in the hinterland of Punjab, Kodagu (also known as Coorg) in Karnataka, and Imphal and the North-Eastern region of India.
The first Indian hockey captain was a tribal from Jharkhand - Jaipal Singh; the present Indian hockey captain is a tribal from Orissa - Dileep Tirkey. Similarly, the area around Jalandhar alone has 5 full-time Hockey Academies - Namdhari Hockey Academy, Punjab & Sindh Bank Hockey Academy, Ramesh Chandra Hockey Academy, Surjeet Hockey Academy and Thapar Hockey Academy.
Thus, any professional hockey league in India has to be played equal parts in the big cities and equal parts in the non-metropolitan hockey heartland of India. There should not be a situation like in India's National Football League where just two cities - Goa and Kolkata - account for 9 of the 12 teams.
3. Century Old Tournaments
For more than a century, the fabled Aga Khan tournament has been held at Bombay Gymkhana in Mumbai, the Beighton Cup has been held at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club ground in Kolkata, and the MCC Gold Cup has been held at the Madras Cricket Club ground in Chennai.
No other country has the unique tradition of hosting not one, but three of the oldest hockey tournaments in the world. These tournaments pre-date even the start of the Olympic hockey competition (1908) and India's national hockey championship (1928).
Any professional hockey league introduced in India should co-exist with, and not be at the expense of these tournaments.
6. PHL Season I - A Misfit in the Indian Context
PHL Season I ignored all the features that are unique to hockey in India.
a. The PHL cobbled together artificial team like 'Bangalore Hi Flyers', with fans limited to just one metropolitan region, while ignoring genuine high-fliers like Indian Airlines and Air India, who have name recognition and fans across the length and breadth of the nation.
b. The PHL bypassed the geographically diverse hockey hotbeds of India (Punjab, Jharkhand, Orissa, Coorg, Manipur) by having all its matches in just one venue - Hyderabad.
c. The PHL introduced a brand new league that had to fit into an already packed Indian domestic and international calendar. All other national/international hockey activities in India had to cease for the players participating in the PHL. Can we have say a 6-month version of the PHL with such pre-conditions?
d. The PHL operated completely under the control of the IHF, which decided on the team coaches, team captains and the team players. Where was the freedom for each team to select its own personnel?