How eight-time Olympic gold medallist Indian hockey team fell from grace

Not much has changed for Indian hockey, but in the meantime, everything has.

The Indian men's hockey team, that once ruled the world for nearly four decades and won six successive gold medals, could add only two after the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, in 1964 and then in a depleted field in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, boycotted by the Western lobby in the backdrop of the Cold War.

The lone World Cup trophy India won was in 1975. Since then, they gradually fizzled out of the top echelon of world hockey. And India's search for an Olympic gold medal continues.

Once an invincible side with a rich legacy, heritage, and vast talent pool, India have now been reduced to a mere contestant, lacking consistency and firepower.

Far from the era when they ruled the roost, Indian hockey has been moving in the opposite direction of progress for a prolonged period.

At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, India's 41-year-old struggle for an Olympic medal came to a close when they trounced Germany 5-4 in the third-place playoff.

But India remain far from being convincing and not in a condition to revive their legacy. In April, India were routed by Australia 0-5 Down Under in a bilateral hockey Test series.

In the FIH Pro League, India finished seventh following a disastrous European leg marked with defensive lapses and edgeless attacking prowess, emphasising India's falling game.

India's performances against Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, and Argentina showed coach Craig Fulton and his players have a long way to go.

It also demonstrated that the gains the team made by winning the Asian Champions Trophy and the Asian Games gold medal in 2023 meant very little for India in the larger perspective of world hockey in the build-up to the Paris Olympics.

But why are India that once enthralled the world with their unique style of play composing flair, artistry, dribbling, dodging, and feints no longer considered a force to reckon with?

Several factors and reasons served as the ruiner of Indian hockey. It must be noted that the introduction of artificial turf, which is often blamed for Indian hockey's decline, is not the only reason for this travesty.

A dried talent pool

When Indian hockey was unconquerable, the national team was a well-represented side, with players from diverse regions, be it the eastern or southern states or central states like Madhya Pradesh, Dhyan Chand being the prominent name, besides the traditional hub of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, making up the playing XI.

Players also came from Goa, Maharashtra, and the Anglo-Indian community, who gave India several valuable players like Leslie Claudius. But after independence, that trend started diminishing with the Anglo-Indian community leaving India for greener pastures.

Similarly, other hockey-playing communities like Parsis in western India regarded business as a more lucrative career option over hockey.

Over the years, hockey, once the sport of the masses and was played on the roads and local fields, lost its space to flourishing and attractive sports like cricket, football, badminton, and athletics.

At the same time, states like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal that once functioned as suppliers for talent have stopped producing talent due to the weakening of domestic structure.

It forced Indian hockey to become eternally dependent on three states Punjab, Haryana, and Odisha's tribal belt. They have been contributing more players than any other states in this millennium, but the diversity in skill set and individual brilliance is now a thing of the past.

The Indian cricket team's 1983 World Cup winning moment and cricket's rapid growth further damaged hockey's prospects to a great extent, with youngsters considering cricket a more attractive sport over hockey.

Further, the opening of the Indian economy in 1991 brought a sweeping change in the way Indians looked at life, with people becoming more assiduous about choosing sports. The focus is on glitz, money, and fame which hockey does not bring on.

In the pecking order of this preference, hockey falls behind as rival Olympic sports emerged as a more viable option for the country's youths.

With the waning of the strength of state units, local leagues like Beighton Cup, one of the oldest in the world, lost its sheen. As a result India's once strong breeding ground for hockey talent gradually vanished.

Moreover, India's rudimentary approach to players' development from a young age is another roadblock in progress.

As the Indian officials tend to change coaches frequently to satisfy their ego, the players' progress often gets derailed, with the new coach trying to employ his method of training.

Negligence to nutrition and diet planning at the early stage of their career is another factor that has not yet found a prominent place in India's planning.

Cultural change is not the only reason...

The reason for Indian hockey's downfall does not lie with cultural and financial changes alone. Far-sighted administrators have done more harm to Indian hockey than anybody else.

The introduction of artificial turf at the 1976 Montreal Olympics is often blamed for Indian hockey's fall from grace. But it is more of an administrative failure than players' inability to adapt to new turf.

As India's hockey officials refused to accept the change, the Indian players lost their magic wand.

Their mesmerizing skills like rotating the ball on the turf and dribbling became redundant. Moreover, India's preference to continue playing with wooden sticks against opponents' advanced fibreglass and carbon sticks resulted in a big cultural shock for Indian players. It took India years to woo the change in equipment.

India ended the Montreal Olympics, just a year after becoming the World Cup champions, at the dismal seventh position.

Significantly, this Olympics marked a tectonic shift in the world order of hockey, with Trans Tasmanian rivals New Zealand and Australia winning the gold and silver medals.

The glitz, glamour, and magic associated with Indian hockey gradually started looking pale in front of the geeky, bookish, and data analytics-based domain of world hockey.

At a time when hockey was going through radical changes in the 1970s, India were caustic and did not have a single astroturf at home.

In the build-up to the Montreal Olympics, in a last-minute attempt, Indian hockey experts laid out a layer of cow dung on a shaved-off field at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala to give the players a feeling of playing on flat synthetic turf.

The result was evident in India's performance; they were thrashed by the Netherlands and Australia in the group stage by big margins.

Rule change

Indian hockey fell further down when the sport's international federation imposed rule changes, by introducing rolling substitutions and overhead balls.

Indian, by nature, have a penchant for playing a free-flowing counter-attacking game by sticking to the ground. But the rivals' intent to play overhead balls disrupting India's ground play affected the Men in Blue to a great extent.

At the same time, the introduction of rolling substitutions did not bode well for India. The teams with more sharp-witted tactics draw the maximum benefits from substitutions. The abolition of off-side rule is another factor that India continue to adjust.

However, of late Hockey India has taken various measures to fine-tune the process of progress. But, the gulf between India and the European countries remains wide as the country continues to fall behind in the race to match their superior European rivals.

Due to this anomaly, India's chance of a podium finish at the Paris Olympics is hanging by a thread.