Image Source: Hockey India
Hockey World League Finals is starting today in Raipur, and the first match is scheduled between India and Argentina at 6.30 in the evening.
How many of us are going to watch it? Or rather, how many of us are even aware of it?
A tournament, arguably the second most prominent after the Hockey World Cup, with the best 8 teams of the world, will be held in India for the second consecutive time. Not only that, the 2010 Senior Men’s World Cup as well as the 2013 Junior Men’s World Cup were held in India too. To add to that, the next versions of both Senior and Junior Men’s World Cup will also be held in India in 2018 and 2016, respectively. If that is not all, the Champions Trophy last year was also held in Bhubaneswar.
Yet, we do not find it convenient to support our team in the stadiums. Forget the stadiums, we don’t even watch the sport on out TV sets or read past the headlines about Hockey in our newspapers.
It is very natural that one might be disinterested in the sport if our team is not performing well, but nothing could be further from the truth. Consider this-
• Making a jump of two places in the recent rankings, India is now the World No. 6 team. In recent years, this is India’s best ranking.
• The Indian team has registered a win against all of the top 5 ranked nations in the past one year itself.
• Recently, India defeated Pakistan 6-2 in the final to win the Junior Men’s Asia Cup.
• By winning the Asian games Hockey Gold last year (after a long gap of 16 years) by defeating Pakistan in the shoot-out, the Indian team became the first one to book its place in the Rio Olympics.
• In August this year, the Indian Women’s Hockey team also qualified for the Rio Olympics, a feat achieved after 36 years.
• Defeated Australia 3-1 in a four match bilateral series in their own backyard.
We all do wish that Indian Hockey goes to a new level in the near future, perhaps to the level it had in the Dhyan Chand era. But to achieve that, the team requires our support. The Logical Indian community praises the Indian Hockey team for its spectacular recent performances and wishes the team all the best for Hockey World League Finals.
