Blue blood lineage! If one’s father was a hockey blue why could not the son follow in his footsteps? Well I was definitely impressed with the hockey stick kept in one corner of the bedroom. It made me think of the exploits of my father on the hockey field. My father used to talk with great reverence about the magical hockey wizardry of the great Indian hockey player Dhyan Chand. He used to be full of pride because of our world supremacy in hockey during his time.
I got a chance to play hockey in my school in the sports hours. I played for one of the the houses out of yellow, red, green and blue. I was tried in different positions but one position stuck with me and that was of a forward. Playing some fast games with the men of the Gorkha Brigade in their ground, made a lot of difference in my game. I became a dangerous forward. A goal would become a certainty if the ball was with me. The only way for the opposite goalkeeper to ward off my goal would be to strike wildly at my feet or body causing many injuries. Once I had to be on the bed for about a month when his stick took my ankle with great force. Another time I escaped with a cut above my eye. Initially I thought that the stick had hit my eye as blood filled it, just as I was about to put the ball in to the goal.
The opposite goalkeeper was under threat of rustication from school because of a lack of sportsmanship spirit, but he was my friend and I took his side saying that the hit was not deliberate but in the heat of the moment due to excitement.
When I joined another school in the plains far down in the east coast of India, I did play some hockey but then my attention shifted to cricket and I left playing hockey.
Now when I think of hockey I find that the game of hockey is very fast. One has to be physically fit. One should be able to run fast and sideways and forwards and dribble.
One has to anticipate correctly the moves of the opposition. Even if you are perspiring with sweat, your heart is thumping and some joint or muscle is paining because of the sudden twists and turns or due to being hit by the ball or the hockey or bumping into another player or tripped or pushed or due to your own clumsiness one has to be ready and alert and active and correct in the moves and the decision to pass the ball and to whom or to go back or sideways or forward or tackle or go for a long pass etc.
One has to go on learning from ones mistakes and from the good game of others who are better than us in some particular area or technique or planning of the game, but fast.
Then there is need for coordination and proper understanding between the team members. And finally a determination to win with mental aspects of the game needing full attention e.g. the development of the ability to take correct decisions on the spur of the moment even when under all kinds of physical and mental fatigue and stress on the field during a crucial game , and convert the same in to a correct hockey action.
I would not like to comment on the present sate of our hockey (I am neither a politician or official nor an expert coach) but would like to wish the Indian team the best so that they really act as a team along with individual geniuses doing their part and do not rest until the team and or individual’s efforts results in their ‘’planting the flag of victory’’ once again in the world arena consistently.