Wednesday 13 January 2010

United we fight the administartors!!

It is absolutely shameful that the Indian hockey players have had to resort to going on strike to get dues paid from Hockey India. Hockey India is offering players Rs. 25000 as outstanding dues for 2009. This is such a paltry sum that it sickens me to think of what we have made of our national sport and its great heritage.

Our greatest sporting glories have been provided by Hockey. India has won the Olympic Gold 8 times. This included a run from 1928 Amsterdam till 1956 Melbourne where nobody could even come close to matching the Indians. Forget winning a Gold we don't even have another medal in any other team sport at the Olympics in more than a 100 years of competition.

I find it hard to believe that in a country where a rookie cricketer like Ishant Sharma earns 3.8 crore and somelike Dinesh Karthik earns 2.1 crore for a few weeks of IPL we cannot offer our hockey players even a decent wage to represent the country. Some officials of Hockey India have turned around and accused the players of prioritizing Money over Country. Obviously these 'officials' don't understand the meaning of the word professional. How many of us will continue working without getting paid?

There are also those who feel the timing of the protest is not right as India is set to host the 2010 Hockey World Cup in six weeks time. 2010 also has the Asian Games, and the Commonwealth Games. I think the timing could not be better. It is high time that we as a country have egg on our face and our sporting administrative ineptitude is laid bare to the world.

I just hope no deal can be struck between the players and Hockey India which promises the players payment after the World Cup as suggested by the Sports Minister. We have obviously heard such hollow promises before. Either Hockey India pay the players upfront or we should not have a team to represent us at this event.

I urge all Indians to support the players. We have to make sure that they get a fair deal. The administrators cannot get away with this again. I urge all the Players in the team and even those who might be called up as replacements to stay together and not give in to the tactics of Hockey India. We need our national game back.

5 comments:

Kuber said...

whats the call for action for regular folks mate..?

its because our hockey players don have other opportunities that they are expected to buckle to admin pressure again...

so tell me what can i do???

Street Style said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Street Style said...

I think this sheer apathy of these so called administrators has to com to an end. I really blame this as much as on Indians as I do the administrators..why have we not done anything abt all that has been going on in the hockey circles? why have we let this great game slip away while cricket has minnowed it to no end.

Its as much our mistake why no... young Indian boy or girl wants to play hockey... they only think of Sachin & Dhoni.. why don't you start a viral campaign on supporting the hockey team right here on facebook..lets discuss this & do something.
2 seconds ago ·

Shashreek Roy said...

I couldn't agree more with you. It is a real shame that we don't give our national sport its due. The money has certainly been drained out from the sport but to add to it the officials at the top aren't committed to the sport. Unfortunately the administrators are only in it for their personal interests. The statement made by them about players not seeing country before money is pretty ironical since they clearly don't show keen interest in the sport but are always ready for the money.

Shashreek Roy said...

Oh btw i know that cricket has taken away the limelight but these cricketers are doing good things for our national sport. Apparently Dhoni and his men are contributing Rs.1 crore to the Indian hockey team.

Hopefully the hockey administrators can learn from that.