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Holding the Line </div> <div id="center"><div id="squeeze"><div class="right-corner"><div class="left-corner"> <div class="story-cat"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reporting-and-essays/reportage">Reportage</a></div> <h2>Holding the Line </h2> <div class="clear-block"> <style> .description, .form-required{ display:none; } </style> <script> jQuery(function ($) { $('#read-more-modal').click(function (e) { $('#basic-modal-content').modal(); return false; }); }); </script> <div id="basic-modal-content"> <div> <img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/all/themes/caravanmag/images/cvn_login_modal_header.png" style="width:100%;"> </div> <div class="modal-bottom-row-container"> <div class="modal-bottom-column-left"> <a style="color:white;" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/user/register?destination=welcome-caravan"><button class="button-modal-register">REGISTER 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style='position:absolute; width:325px; height:220px; left:0px; top:0px; padding:0px; background-image:url(http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/full_story_popup.gif); border:0px solid #B1470D; z-index: 899;'><div style='height:25px;padding-top: 5px; color:#990000;'><div style='float:right; padding:4px;'><a href='#' style='cursor:hand;' onclick='return floatingMenu.hide()'><img src='https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/close.gif' style='border:none;' /></a></div></div><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.magzter.com/IN/Delhi-Press/The-Caravan/News/' target='_blank' style='cursor:hand;'> <div style='height:190px;'></div></a></div>"); } </script> <script> $("#menu-2031-1").addClass("story-active"); $("#menu-2038-1").addClass("story-active"); </script><div class="subhheading"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh">Is Sardara Singh the last of India’s hockey greats?</a></div><div class="authorndate">By <a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/profile/7094">Sundeep Misra</a> | <span class="date-display-single">1 June 2015</span></div><div class="full-image-view"><div class="show-image" style="display:block"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images</a>]" title="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_01.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_01.jpg" alt="" title="" width="349" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images</div><div class="f-caption"></div></div><div class="show-image-10227" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images</a>]" title="" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_01.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_01.jpg" alt="" title="" width="349" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images</div><div class="f-caption"></div></div><div class="show-image-10229" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][Sardara Singh in a junior team match against South Africa in 2005. He made his senior team debut the following year against Pakistan.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> ARIF ALI / AFP / Getty Images</a>]" title="Sardara Singh in a junior team match against South Africa in 2005. He made his senior team debut the following year against Pakistan." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_02.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_02.jpg" alt="" title="" width="600" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">ARIF ALI / AFP / Getty Images</div><div class="f-caption">Sardara Singh in a junior team match against South Africa in 2005. He made his senior team debut the following year against Pakistan.</div></div><div class="show-image-10230" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][India playing Australia at the 1984 Olympics. That team, coached by the Olympian Balkishan Singh, was one of India’s best ever, but did not manage a podium finish. India has won no Olympic medal since 1980. Its first and only World Cup win was in 1975.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> David Canon / getty images</a>]" title="India playing Australia at the 1984 Olympics. That team, coached by the Olympian Balkishan Singh, was one of India’s best ever, but did not manage a podium finish. India has won no Olympic medal since 1980. Its first and only World Cup win was in 1975." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_03.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_03.jpg" alt="" title="" width="644" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">David Canon / getty images</div><div class="f-caption">India playing Australia at the 1984 Olympics. That team, coached by the Olympian Balkishan Singh, was one of India’s best ever, but did not manage a podium finish. India has won no Olympic medal since 1980. Its first and only World Cup win was in 1975.</div></div><div class="show-image-10231" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][The victorious Indian team, captained by Balbir Singh, at the Melbourne 1956 Olympics. The Indian hockey team was virtually unbeatable for much of of the twentieth century.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> ullstein bild / Getty Images</a>]" title="The victorious Indian team, captained by Balbir Singh, at the Melbourne 1956 Olympics. The Indian hockey team was virtually unbeatable for much of of the twentieth century." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_04.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_04.jpg" alt="" title="" width="296" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">ullstein bild / Getty Images</div><div class="f-caption">The victorious Indian team, captained by Balbir Singh, at the Melbourne 1956 Olympics. The Indian hockey team was virtually unbeatable for much of of the twentieth century.</div></div><div class="show-image-10232" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][The iconic Indian forward Dhanraj Pillay, one of Sardara’s heroes. Pillay, among Indian hockey’s finest players in recent times, was one of several players who missed chances to take India to a semi-final spot in Sydney 2000, and is haunted by that loss.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> BCCL</a>]" title="The iconic Indian forward Dhanraj Pillay, one of Sardara’s heroes. Pillay, among Indian hockey’s finest players in recent times, was one of several players who missed chances to take India to a semi-final spot in Sydney 2000, and is haunted by that loss." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_05.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_05.jpg" alt="" title="" width="520" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">BCCL</div><div class="f-caption">The iconic Indian forward Dhanraj Pillay, one of Sardara’s heroes. Pillay, among Indian hockey’s finest players in recent times, was one of several players who missed chances to take India to a semi-final spot in Sydney 2000, and is haunted by that loss.</div></div><div class="show-image-10233" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][KPS Gill took over the Indian Hockey Federation in the mid-1990s, and remained its head until it was disbanded in 2008.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> DIBYANGSHU SARKAR / AFP / Getty Images</a>]" title="KPS Gill took over the Indian Hockey Federation in the mid-1990s, and remained its head until it was disbanded in 2008." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_07.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_07.jpg" alt="" title="" width="310" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">DIBYANGSHU SARKAR / AFP / Getty Images</div><div class="f-caption">KPS Gill took over the Indian Hockey Federation in the mid-1990s, and remained its head until it was disbanded in 2008.</div></div><div class="show-image-10234" style="display:none"><div class="f-image"><a rel="lightbox[lightbox_full_image][India’s opening match against Belgium at the London Olympics in 2012. The team finished twelfth, at the bottom of the standings.<br /><br /><a class="lb-credit"> Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images</a>]" title="India’s opening match against Belgium at the London Olympics in 2012. The team finished twelfth, at the bottom of the standings." href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/lightbox_full_image/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_08.jpg"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_carousel/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_08.jpg" alt="" title="" width="653" height="435" class="imagecache imagecache-story_carousel"/></a></div><div class="f-credit">Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images</div><div class="f-caption">India’s opening match against Belgium at the London Olympics in 2012. The team finished twelfth, at the bottom of the standings.</div></div></div><div class="thumb-image-view thumbnail-list"><a href="javascript:loadmain(10227)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_01.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a><a href="javascript:loadmain(10229)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_02.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a><a href="javascript:loadmain(10230)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_03.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a><a href="javascript:loadmain(10231)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_04.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a><a href="javascript:loadmain(10232)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_05.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a><a href="javascript:loadmain(10233)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_07.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a><a href="javascript:loadmain(10234)"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654im_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/default/files/imagecache/galleria_image_thumbnail/holding-the-line_the-caravan-magazine_june-2015_08.jpg" alt="" title="" width="65" height="44" class="imagecache imagecache-galleria_image_thumbnail"/></a></div> <div class="share-with"> <span class="st_facebook_hcount" displaytext="Facebook"></span> <span class="st_twitter_hcount" displaytext="Tweet"></span>  <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654js_/https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>  <g:plusone href="http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh"></g:plusone> <div class="print-email"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/print/5357">Print</a>|<a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/printmail/5357">E-Mail</a>|</div><a href="javascript:void(0);"><div class="single-page">Single Page</div><div class="multipage">Multiple Page</div></a></div> <script type="text/javascript">var switchTo5x=false;</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654js_/http://w.sharethis.com/button/buttons.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript">stLight.options({publisher:'8014eb0d-feae-4f08-9056-b8b78a153569'});</script> <div class="fullpage-body"><div class="detailBody"><div class="view view-story-page-views view-id-story_page_views view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-1"> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-body"> <div class="field-content"><p class="rtejustify"><strong>THE KYOCERA AT THE HAGUE</strong> in the Netherlands is not one of hockey’s great venues. A few kilometres before you reach the stadium, it looms up ahead, looking like a warehouse that someone wrapped in tinfoil, with a deep gap cut in the middle. Late in the afternoon on the day of the final of the 2014 Men’s Hockey World Cup, thousands of cars were lined up outside the stadium in neat rows, like colourful planters. But the unmistakable thunder of fans cheering inside was missing; instead, you heard music blaring, interrupted by a man’s voice echoing through the stadium, drawing out the words: “Australia, once again, the world champions!”</p> <p class="rtejustify">It was 15 June 2014, and Australia had beaten—humiliated—the Netherlands 6-1. Some Australian players were running around the pitch, their national flag in hand. Another group was already surrounded by reporters. A few sat on the team bench, taking in their victory, prone to sudden bouts of hugging and back-slapping. It had been one of the most one-sided World Cup finals ever. Dutch fans draped in orange, their team’s colours, sat stunned, long after the final whistle had blown. In the fourteenth minute, they had been leading 1-0; then, “Big Dog” Chris Ciriello scored a hat-trick, and practically ended the game for the <em>Oranje</em>.</p> <p class="rtejustify">A short while later, I waited at one end of the stadium, next to the players’ lounge, whose huge glass doors were manned by security teams. Waiters bustled in with bottles of champagne, and Australian fans stood outside, waiting patiently for the players to emerge. It took time—World Cup victory celebrations tend to run long and raucous. Coaches usually send players out one by one, so that they can sign autographs, meet family and friends, and pose for pictures. That day, things were slightly different: the Australian coach, Ric Charlesworth, came out first.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Charlesworth was exactly the man I was waiting to see. Those in the crowd who recognised him rushed over to offer their congratulations and take pictures. A few officials of the International Hockey Federation, or FIH, on a cigarette break, walked over and pumped his hand vigorously. It was Charlesworth’s last day in hockey: earlier in the tournament, he had announced his retirement from coaching and management. “Time I devote myself to the family,” he said.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Before anybody else could drag him away, I led him to the side of a burger stand to raise a question I had been asking him for a while. Was India capable of producing world-class players on a regular basis? “On the day I win the World Cup, you want to ask questions about the Indian side?” Charlesworth said, with a wry smile. The tournament had ended a good while earlier for India, which finished ninth among the 12 competing teams.</p> <p class="rtejustify">I first asked Charlesworth the question in 2010, when the Men’s Hockey World Cup circus pitched up in India. The home team placed eighth in that tournament. It was also when I first asked him what he thought about India’s captain and most dangerous player, the midfielder Sardara Singh. Charlesworth has a habit of stalling on questions that he might answer positively, particularly when it comes to Indian hockey. He understood that I was speaking on behalf of people who were looking for something in which to place their faith, in a bleak time. “Looking for a good headline for your player!” he said, with a smile. “He is good—lot of strength in those legs. Let’s see where he reaches in four years.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Four years later, at the Kyocera, a cheer went up as Simon Orchard came out of the players’ lounge. “He played well today,” Charlesworth remarked of him. “One of the key players to stop the Dutch midfield.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">“India?” I persisted.</p> <p class="rtejustify">He looked sideways at me, and huffed out a half-laugh. Charlesworth single-handedly took Australian women’s hockey to the pinnacle of the sport in the 1990s. In the present decade, he has led the Australian men’s team to two consecutive World Cup victories. You could call him the coach with the Midas touch. He understands talent in a way few do. He knows which players can make it and which players will not. (He prefers players who raise their levels of performance through sheer grit even if they aren’t naturally gifted.)</p>  <p class="rtejustify">Outside the players’ lounge, another, louder cheer sounded. Jamie Dwyer, the Australian team’s superstar, named world hockey’s player of the year several times, had joined the crowd. Charlesworth turned to me. “I think we all saw a vastly improved Indian side at this World Cup,” he said. “But there is a lot more to do. This is not enough. It’s long-term. You cannot dream. You need to work.</p> <p class="rtejustify">“You were good then,” he continued, referring to 2010, when the team seemed stronger, even if the results weren’t noticeably different. “You are not good now. Terry is a good coach. But you need to keep him. There is a need for consistency.” (He was not wrong. In October 2014, four months after the World Cup, the Indian coach, Terry Walsh, took the team to gold at the Asian Games held in Incheon, South Korea. The medal came after a 16-year gap, and allowed India to qualify directly for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.)</p> <p class="rtejustify">I repeated my question about Sardara. “What about Sardara? How good is he?”</p> <p class="rtejustify">“He is very good. But you know”—Charlesworth paused and laughed the half-laugh again—“hockey is a team sport. There is an obsession in India about individuals in a team game. Your cricket team is too individual in nature, and so are the hockey players.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">“Is he the last of the greats?” I asked. “Are we watching the decline of ‘big’ players in India?” Just then, a father came up with his son, both geared up in Australian team shirts, to get a picture taken with the coach.</p> <p class="rtejustify">“In a way, yes,” Charlesworth responded, once the picture had been taken. “Because the system is not geared to produce players. Long-term planning has not been there. So the decline in performance. But for Indian hockey and world hockey, I hope and pray that Sardar”—Charlesworth pronounced it “Suurdar”—“is not the last of the big players. India needs more Sardars to hold the team together.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Charlesworth knew better than many the scope of the challenge that India faced. He was appointed a technical advisor to the Indian team in 2008, but his project to put India back at the top of a sport it had once ruled met an end only a few months after it began. Disgusted with the way hockey was run here, he decided to pack his bags and go home. On the day he left for Australia, he said to me, “Are you guys serious about winning once again?” Just over a year later, he returned to India as the coach of the Australian men’s team, for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Australia beat India 8-0 in the final.</p> <p class="rtejustify">As Charlesworth moved back towards the lounge at the Kyocera, I heard the loudest cheer of the evening. Chris Ciriello had emerged from the lounge, carrying the World Cup trophy with him. A hat-trick in a World Cup final is nothing short of heroic; this was his evening. A large group of Dutch fans, in their orange shirts, some still draped in Dutch flags, looked on, sipping their lager wistfully.</p> <p class="rtejustify"> </p> <p class="rtejustify"><strong>INDIA’S OPENING GAME</strong> of the 2014 World Cup, against Belgium, included a couple of passages of play that were typical of Sardara Singh. When he advanced from his own half, with the ball, the Belgians noticeably back-pedalled, trying hard to keep up. None tackled him until he reached the Belgian half; having crossed the half-way line, he dodged past two players, and angled a hit that kissed the outside of the goal’s right post. In the game’s second half, he raced down the left flank, his reverse hits shooting into areas where, in an ideal world, a teammate would have been ready to meet the ball. He was out-thinking his own forwards. Unfortunately, it was not enough. India lost the game 2-3.</p>  <p class="rtejustify">Sardara is the sort of player who is most dangerous when he is on the ball: moving with it, he can entice the opposition to come after him in a way that creates space for other players. “He has that peripheral vision,” the former Indian midfielder Mohammed Riaz told me. “He sees what most players can’t.” Riaz was Sardara’s coach on his international debut, on a 2003 tour of Poland with India’s junior team.</p> <p class="rtejustify">India has produced some wonderful midfielders in the last 40 years. Ajit Pal Singh, the captain of the 1975 World Cup-winning team, was full of “lazy elegance,” as Charlesworth once said. Hardeep Singh’s defence-splitting passes earned him a place on the 1984 Olympics team, which finished fifth in Los Angeles. Then came Vivek Singh, in the late 1980s, bent low over his stick, giving the impression that he would fall over any second but amazingly capable of threading a pass through the toughest of defences.</p> <p class="rtejustify">More than a decade later, there came Sardara, who made his senior debut in 2006, against Pakistan. Starting off as an inside-forward, he developed into a defensive midfielder. It took many games, and a great deal of experience, for him to revert to playing in an attacking position, which allows him to easily change the flow of a game. During the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, the then Indian team coach, Jose Brasa, told a reporter: “He can be the best in the world.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Sardara succeeded in spite of an Indian system that has been misfiring since after the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics—when the country sent out one of its best teams ever, coached by the great veteran Balkishan Singh. Sardara broke though grindingly inefficient coaching, the constant shuffling of players in state and national squads, waning popular support, and the close-to-comatose state of Indian hockey; he has now made it to the top of the game, and occupied its highest level for close to a decade.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Like all of India’s top players, Sardara owes a debt to one of the few things the Indian hockey administration has succeeded in getting right in spite of numerous failings in other departments. This is the junior tour, which has, for some years now, been instrumental in keeping the sport alive in the country by giving its best younger players chances and playing time. The junior Indian hockey team gets constant exposure on the international circuit. Playing in Europe, which has some of the world’s finest teams and infrastructure, has especially increased confidence among young players, and increased their appetites to be the best.</p> <p class="rtejustify">In mid-March, I met the former Indian captain Dilip Tirkey, now a Biju Janata Dal politician and a member of the Rajya Sabha, in Delhi. “I agree on the juniors going abroad constantly, even if it is in Asia,” he told me. “That increases the desire to play for the national team, and it keeps the machine rolling.” Tirkey himself was thrown into the deep end when he was selected, as a teenager, for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. In the Olympics in Sydney in 2000 and in Athens in 2004, Tirkey was counted as one of the five best full backs in the world. “I didn’t have a choice,” Tirkey, soft-spoken and affable, said. He had to play to his potential, “learn fast and be the best in the world.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Over the course of reporting this story, I asked Tirkey and many others my question about Sardara—whether he is the last of India’s great players, an actual <em>sardar</em>, or leader, to his men. Indian hockey’s present is a shaky bridge between its past and its future, and Sardara is one of the last remaining links to a glorious old history. The question, it seemed to me, was key to understanding Sardara, the conditions that produced him, and the fate of India’s hockey tradition. It gave Tirkey pause. “I don’t want to say yes,” he said. “I just hope there are more players with his work ethic.”</p> <p class="rtejustify"> </p>  <p class="rtejustify"><strong>"WORK ETHIC”</strong> has not typically been the muscle that powers Indian hockey. Ever since the first Indian picked up a hockey stick, the nation, and its teams, have largely chased victory by relying on supple wrists and natural skill. For generations, Indian teams’ feints and dodges were unbeatable: through early and the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Indians were the best in the world. Then, the Europeans, frustrated by this superiority, decided to see if determination and a strong grounding in the basics of the game could unlock success. They put their players to training as if their lives depended on it. In the 1970s, they finally broke through. Since 1975, when India last won the World Cup, no Indian team has ever dominated world hockey.</p> <p class="rtejustify">For 35 years, India has not even finished in the top four in the two hockey competitions that matter the most, the World Cup and the Olympics. In 1980, the team won a devalued gold medal at the Moscow Olympics, which were boycotted by several Western nations and their allies, in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. This included hockey powerhouses such as the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, Pakistan and England. The final, against Spain, was thrilling nonetheless: India won narrowly, 4-3. That was the last time an Indian hockey player stood on an Olympic podium. For all its greatness, the Indian team that went to Los Angeles four years later was unsuccessful: India had needed a win against Germany to go through to the semi-finals, but a poor match ended in a goalless draw, and the Germans had the advantage. They slipped through, and India had to be content with finishing fifth.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Never again was there the alchemy required to produce Olympic gold—a good coach combining with a good set of players. Pakistan won gold in 1985, but since then, the European teams and Australia have dominated the field completely: Great Britain and Australia have won one Olympic gold each, the Netherlands two, and Germany three.</p> <p class="rtejustify">The odd great game aside, India competed on the world stage merely to make up the numbers. As tales of glory receded into legend, hockey stopped attracting India’s best sporting talent the way it once used to. This was especially true in Punjab, which had long yielded some of the country’s greatest players. Gone was the brilliance of Balbir Singh Senior, who won three gold medals, in 1948, 1952 and 1956, and of Udham Singh, whose selfless play made others into stars even as he picked up three golds and a silver between 1952 and 1964. Prithipal Singh was the top scorer at each of three Olympic Games in which he played between 1960 and 1968; India won a medal in each of those tournaments, including gold in Tokyo 1964. There was the fluid, soft-footed Ajit Pal Singh, who presided over the glory of 1975; the much-feared defender Surjit Singh; Pargat Singh, who could pick a ball out from between the sticks of four or five forwards in the manner of someone threading a needle; and Baljit Singh Dhillon, who moved like a gazelle. All these great players shared their Punjabi Sikh heritage. As the sport lost its sheen, the tribe of hockey-playing sardars, it seemed, also diminished.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Sardara Singh came after a generation of drought. Born in June 1986 in Rania, Haryana, Sardara shot into the senior team at the age of 20, and set fans’ pulses throbbing. At 22, he became the Indian team’s youngest ever captain when he led it out during the Azlan Shah tournament in Malaysia, in 2008.  Last year, in Incheon, a day before the Asian Games final against Pakistan, the Pakistani coach, Shahnaz Sheikh, stopped to talk with me just after his team finished training. There were the usual, diplomatic one-liners about the game to come—“It will be a close match,” “Both teams are under pressure,” and “The final is all about taking your chances.” Then he said, “We will be watching out for Sardara. He will be the key.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Half an hour after that, I tried to sneak in a look at the Indians’ training session, but Roelant Oltmans, the team’s high-performance director, politely denied me. “Terry”—Terry Walsh, the coach—“doesn’t want anybody to look at the training,” he said. Towards the end of the session, however, some of us journalists were allowed in. A practice game was on—over half of the field, with players evenly distributed. There was Sardara, Sheikh’s biggest anxiety, in midfield, moving as smooth as silk, the ball barely touching his stick. Watching him practice, it was impossible not to see why Sheikh had singled him out.</p>  <p class="rtejustify">Good midfielders play with their heads up, their vision sweeping the field ahead in a 180-degree arc. Sardara, who is fast and powerful, is practically eagle-eyed. Even if you are watching from the top tier of a stadium, he will spot another player on field before you do. Once he has the ball, the clocks slow: suddenly, the game is played at his pace. Forwards crouch in anticipation; defenders get looks of panic on their faces, unsure of where Sardara will place the ball. He sets off flurries of activity in the opposition’s striking circle. Every Indian forward zips in and out, making space, trying to shake off his defender. Imagine an archer trying to hit the bull’s eye while the target shifts every second—that is Sardara’s task in this moment. The slap shot is his favourite, but over the years, it’s his reverse shot that has mesmerised the opposition and the audience that troop in to watch him.</p> <p class="rtejustify">His phenomenal vision will always come into play. If one flank is blocked, he turns the ball, back slightly bent, and looks the other way. The opposing defence keeps getting pushed back. Their midfield is afraid to tackle him; he is capable of sharp, deadly dribbles that can easily beat two or three players at a time. Indeed, Sardara is one of the great dribblers of the modern game. Playing for a team such as Australia or the Netherlands, he would have peers at or near the same level he inhabits. On the Indian team, he does not. </p> <p class="rtejustify">In Incheon, at the practice game where all this unfolded before my eyes, the perfect pass was finally realised. But the ball zipped into empty space. A second earlier, an Indian forward had been standing right there. Once again, Sardara had out-thought his own forward.</p> <p class="rtejustify"> </p> <p class="rtejustify"><strong>I SPOKE TO SARDARA IN APRIL,</strong> in the coffee shop of the Delhi Lawn Tennis Association courts. The Indian hockey team stays here when training in Delhi. Sardara is not a difficult man to talk to, although with him, every answer begins with a yes—“<em>Hanji</em>.” Even when he contradicts you, he does it subtly and softly. “Hanji.” It feels like one of his reverse-stick passes, struck sweetly and tearing up the defence.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Sardara’s physique has been built through hours of training, on the field and in the gym. In a T-shirt and shorts, his torso practically ripples through. His stomach is like a surfboard; his thighs are solid and muscled. Together, these form the core of the midfielder, providing the power to shift and pass the ball, allowing the player to both defend and attack while functioning as the pivot of the team. I remembered that Floris Jan Bovelander, the star of the Netherlands’ 1990 World Cup-winning team, once said about Sardara: “Man, he goes on and on. It’s like watching two lungs running on two legs.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">The man in possession of the lungs in question was candid about his ambitions. Sardara told me he believed his career would amount to nothing without a medal from at least one of the two big tournaments. “That’s what you play for,” he said. “Now, professionally I am regarded as a good player sometimes. That is not good enough. To be able to be respected in the world of hockey, I have to take a team to the podium at the Olympics or the World Cup.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">But the accumulated hurts of the past are deeply etched in Sardara’s mind, and none is worse than that of London 2012. In those Olympic Games, India crashed out of the hockey tournament and finished twelfth, in last place. Sardara was not then the captain of the team—that was the goalkeeper Bharat Chetri—but he was, for many, the flag-bearer: the playmaker and unofficial leader who could make the difference for India in what was a tough field. There is no doubt this was one of the weakest Indian teams to have competed at the Olympics. It was a mess that displayed little cohesion and less grit. As the defeats mounted, the team fell apart spectacularly. For his part, the Indian coach, Michael Nobbs, seemed to fail at inspiring the team to rise to the occasion. The lasting image of that disaster for Indian fans was Sardara, seated on the bench, sobbing after India had finished twelfth, with Nobbs’s arm around his shoulders.</p>  <p class="rtejustify">Sardara was diplomatic on the subject of coaching, and did not answer when I asked if Terry Walsh’s sacking—despite the Asian Games gold—had altered India’s chances at next year’s Olympics. When Walsh left in October 2014, it was clear to observers of Indian hockey that his career was a casualty of personal animus and arrogance, which dictates many relationships behind the scenes in the hockey administration. Walsh was high-performance director of the US Field Hockey Association between 2005 and 2012, and the body had accused him of financial irregularities, though no charges were pressed. But Narinder Batra, the president of Hockey India decided he didn’t want a “tainted person” working with Indian hockey. An official who is close to the team told me that the real reason for the sacking was Walsh’s unhappiness with administrative intereference—some players had been appointed to the national team by a selection committee, even though he himself had struck their names off.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Still, the arithmetic of victory is simple: reaching the Olympic podium requires determination and drive from more than just one player. At a function to honour the Indian team that brought home the 1980 Olympic gold, the captain of that team, Charanjit Kumar, said, “Just dreaming is not good enough. Neither is hoping you might finish in the top three. You need a team and a coach who can carry you there. One defeat in the pool matches may destroy morale, while a narrow win squeezed in the last second may see you enter the final.” If morale is something that carries over from past experiences, however, there is every chance that history may bring more grief than courage to the team that goes to Rio.</p> <p class="rtejustify"> </p> <p class="rtejustify"><strong>IN THE 2000 SYDNEY OLYMPICS,</strong> India played Poland in a game that, if won, would have helped them secure a semi-final spot, setting up a dream match against Pakistan. Pressure and expectations ran high. Tickets that cost 20 Australian dollars were going on the black market for over A$500. India earned a 1-0 lead in the first half, thanks to a penalty corner conversion from Dilip Tirkey. But the second half was frustratingly error-ridden. Chances went begging. A second goal could have broken the Poles, and ensured India a relaxed position in the dying minutes; but Baljit Singh Dhillon and Mukesh Kumar both missed chances. So did the iconic forward Dhanraj Pillay, one of Sardara’s heroes. As the minutes ticked down, the Indians were a jittery lot. The Poles, who were already without semi-final hopes, decided that a few attacks would nicely round off their Olympic campaign.</p> <p class="rtejustify">India committed a defensive error in the last minute. Suddenly, Poland had enough space to beat the Indian goalkeeper. Then, in the 30 seconds before the whistle blew, India missed one last opportunity to clinch the match. That evening still shadows the memories of many players on that team. I learned that Pillay required medication to cope with the disappointment.</p> <p class="rtejustify">That is India’s Olympic burden: the failure to live up to the demands of history. The gold of past victories are locked up in the vaults of the players of those old teams, but they weigh heavily on the minds of every player who wears the Indian jersey today. It is a trying legacy to contend with: eight gold medals, but none of them in the last 35 years. In Athens, four years after Sydney, following yet another disappointment, Pillay sobbed openly in a television interview, saying, “Without an Olympic medal, it’s a worthless career.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">During our interview, Sardara told me that any detailed discussion of what could happen at Rio 2016 was off the table. When I tried to press him on the coaching issue, and what the frequent changing of the guard meant for India, he was as tactful as a player can be. “Terry was good but there were some issues,” he explained. “I think Paul van Ass”—India’s current coach, appointed in January 2015—“is also a good coach. After all, he took Holland to the 2012 Olympic and 2014 World Cup finals. He has the time to change and do what is required to reach the podium.”</p>  <p class="rtejustify">It is one thing to take the Netherlands to two major finals in two years. Repeating the feat with India, to make a comparison that followers of football will understand, would be like asking Jose Mourinho, coach of the 2015 English Premier League Champions, to do with modest Everton what he does with the rich and talent-stuffed Chelsea. Coaches play a vital role in the development of a team, particularly in hockey. They need time to understand individuals’ skill sets and mindsets, before working on every player to develop his strengths and role within the squad. With just over a year to go to Rio, Paul van Ass is short on time. Much will depend on Sardara’s leadership skills, and how van Ass uses them. In truth, if van Ass takes India to a podium finish next year, the Bharat Ratna would probably be his for the taking.</p> <p class="rtejustify">As Sardara and I spoke, it seemed to me that he realised that this was, realistically, his last chance at Olympic glory—he will be 29 years old next year. But by changing horses midstream with the Walsh sacking, India may have already thrown away any decent chance of success. Walsh, who was appointed in late 2013, brought about a stability that the Indian team had not seen in several years. At the 2014 World Cup, India dominated its first two matches, against Belgium and England; not by way of scoring—they lost both games—but through sheer ball possession. The Indian team played better hockey than the other sides. It paid off beautifully: by the time the team reached the Asian Games final in Incheon, it was a cohesive unit, with solid defensive organisation whenever the situation required six men at the back. After the final, Pakistan’s coach, Shahnaz Sheikh, acknowledged this. “Your team was better at defensive positions,” he said. “We couldn’t break through.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">There may not be enough time to repeat Walsh’s feat. But Sardara, by nature, is full of optimism. “I do feel Paul has seen enough of the team in the Azlan Shah,” he said, meaning the biennial international tournament held in Malaysia; India placed third among the six teams in the latest edition, in Ipoh, earlier this year. “Now, after the Hockey World League semis and final, he would be ready to take us where we could play our best for that medal.” India will play the Hockey World League semi-finals in Brasschat, near Antwerp, through June and July this year; a top six finish will ensure a place in the finals at the end of the year, in India.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Jude Felix, the captain of India’s 1994 World Cup team, is now part of Paul van Ass’ coaching staff, as he was with Terry Walsh. “Grace, skills, feints, body dodges is what Sardara brings to the field,” Felix told me. “But we as a coaching unit want him to dodge with the ball, because that is where his strength lies. As a player, he will be the best judge of when to release the ball.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Felix was once part of a major transition in Indian hockey. Coached by the astute Cedric D’Souza, the 1994 team successfully mixed the typical Indian approach with the European methods of holding the ball and creating spaces. For the first time, off the ball running was seen as a tactical weapon; the speedy Edward Aranha created notable confusion among opposition teams. In that side, Felix was the midfield live wire. Two decades from that point, he seemed to think that Indians have steadily lost the abilities that had once set them apart: the dribbles and the feints. “We need to bring those skills back,” he said. “That is what players like Sardara and Gurbaj have.” The midfielder Gurbaj Singh is poetry in motion; a painter with the turf as his canvas. On his day, his moves are masterpieces, and he can leave beaten defenders a psychological mess.</p> <p class="rtejustify">I asked Felix, too, if Sardara was the last of the great Sardars. He, like Tirkey, looked uncomfortable. “I hope not,” he said, after a pause. “But it looks like it, unless we decide to change things around by creating structures at the ground level. Punjab is the only state doing it at the moment. And slowly things will be beyond us if we don’t produce better players.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">It would be a psychological blow to lose India’s tradition of a great, standard-carrying player. But the question of Sardara being the last of this tradition speaks to a more fundamental concern, about the conditions that produced him, and the possible collapse of an entire system of spotting and nurturing talent that was, until about two decades ago, still in fine tune across the college, university and state levels.</p>  <p class="rtejustify"><strong style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">IN 1994,</strong><span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;"> the veteran policeman KPS Gill, just about to retire from a momentous career as the director general of police for Punjab, decided to take on another tough job. Gill ran for the presidency of the Indian Hockey Federation that year. I was in Bhopal to cover those IHF elections, and saw first-hand the large number of Punjab police officers who flooded the city, taking up stations to ensure Gill had the upper hand. He won, and marched into the IHF offices at Dhyan Chand Stadium in Delhi like a monarch.</span></p> <p class="rtejustify">His opening moves were good. He appointed Cedric D’Souza as coach, and under him the Indian team started to show promise. It did well at the 1994 World Cup, placing fifth. This was an inspiring development, and should have spurred the new leadership to tackle some of the big problems that Indian hockey was faced with—the erosion of the training system at ground level; the incompetence of domestic coaches; the chronic insecurity of national-level players, scrabbling to get a spot on the team at all costs. Here, Gill faltered. Instead of hiring the best minds available to run Indian hockey, he decided to centralise power, and started to make more and more decisions on his own.</p> <p class="rtejustify">This precipitated a collapse. Gill failed to enact any kind of long-term strategy. If a coach lost, he was quickly sacked—so coaches came and went as though they were playing a game of musical chairs. D’Souza was sacked in March 2002, mid-way through the Kuala Lumpur World Cup. India had started with a draw and after three consecutive defeats, Gill decided D’Souza had to go. After that came a time when players and coaches were removed even if they were winning: MK Kaushik, having coached the team to a gold medal in the 1998 Asian Games in Bangkok, was asked to leave because he stood by the team when they asked for bonuses. Then Gill sacked the goalkeeper Ashish Ballal for an interview he gave to <em>Outlook</em> magazine before the team left for Bangkok, in which Ballal said, “Everybody is talking about our prospects—that we will return with the gold. I think it is a big joke because we do not even have a kit. The Indian Hockey Federation is run by a drunkard and a clerk.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Gill ran the IHF like it was a police station. Everybody had to dance attendance. D’Souza was brought back as coach in 2002, then fired midway through the World Cup that year. When Rajinder Singh Senior was judged not good enough for the team, Rajinder Singh Junior was brought in. (The two are not related.) Through all this, fan interest in the game plummeted. Cities that actively promoted hockey—the metros, and towns such as Jalandhar, Bhopal and Lucknow—no longer had local icons that children could look up to. Even the media steadily lost its enthusiasm for the game. If hockey turned up in the news, it was usually for dispiriting reasons. Schools began to pour ever greater resources into cricket, at hockey’s expense. In about ten years, school and college tournaments more or less died out. The All India Inter-University tournament, once the cradle of Indian hockey, was now being held perfunctorily, supervised by inefficient umpires, leading to a lack of interest among universities.</p> <p class="rtejustify">To all of this, the IHF turned a blind eye. The pool of talent available to the national team shrank. The country’s former Olympians, who might have been able to remedy matters, seemed to care about little other than their own glory days—young hopefuls were unlikely to hear anything from them other than how they would change hockey if appointed national coach. But even if any former heroes had decided to change things—by working for grassroots-level hockey, or coaching a college or university team—there was a larger problem at work. India’s coaching methods had become hopelessly archaic, and no one seemed interested in changing them.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Gill remained at the helm until 2008, when the IHF’s secretary, K Jothikumaran, was suspended after being found to have taken money to induct players into the junior side. The scandal revealed just how corrupt the sport had become. Gill was left out in the cold, and the IHF was disbanded. The country’s current managing body for the sport, Hockey India, was formed in consequence.</p> <p class="rtejustify">But the damage had been done. Apart from Dilip Tirkey, there was not a single world-class player in the Indian side when it went to the 2006 World Cup in Mönchengladbach, Germany. Unsurprisingly, it finished eleventh, one spot from the bottom. Then, for the first time in Olympic history, the Indian team failed to qualify for the next Games, and had to miss Beijing 2008. Gill, addressing a press conference after the disaster, said, “We give too much importance to the Olympics.”</p>  <p class="rtejustify">Sardara appeared on the scene just as India had touched the lowest point of this drama, seeming almost too good to be true. In one of those strange turns of history that allow great sportsmen to come out of nowhere, he carved out a place for himself—and having had the opportunity to work with coaches such as Jose Brasa and Terry Walsh, he flowered. Today, watching any India match will make clear that the team is built around Sardara. When he is off the pitch, the midfield appears suddenly empty; it lacks thrust. This may be an illusion caused by the natural dominance of such a talented player. Psychologically, his absence affects his teammates enormously, as it does fans. It may be that India will not win gold while he is still with the team, but the sheer fact of his existence, and his establishment as a world-class player, gives rise to the hope, both dangerous and necessary, that good players will wriggle through a bad system even without support.</p> <p class="rtejustify">After India beat Pakistan at the Asian Games, Tahir Zaman, the former Pakistan captain and a member of a great team that won the 1994 World Cup, said: “You guys should be happy that a player like Sardara made it to through the system.” When I asked him to elaborate, he explained, “Talent is not the issue. You need an eye for it. Both India and Pakistan don’t have good talent spotters. We look at the dribble alone. We don’t look at the intelligence of the player. In Sardara, you have a player who thinks. If you find another five like him, you will be champions again.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Sometimes it seems that, for the future of Indian hockey, Sardara has to play like there are five of him. “Too much hockey for him and the other players,” Anil Aldrin, a full back in India’s 1994 World Cup team, said to me. “He needs to be the catalyst for other players to come through. They need someone who they can look up to. Let’s not look only until Rio. You need Sardara until almost 2020”—another five years, demanding commitment and skill at the very highest level.</p> <p class="rtejustify">“But that’s hockey,” Sardara said, when I asked him how he managed not to crack under the pressure—having to lead the team, create the moves, as well as fall back to defend, in game after game. “That’s my job and skill set. I love playing attacking hockey. And when I defend, I am happy when I break a move.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">There are, however, times when the pressure gets to him. His general demeanour is to play it cool: he is not usually the sort of player who will fling his stick or challenge an umpire. If he has to say something to one of his men, he will run over to the player’s position to talk to him. Even his admonishments are quiet. But those times when the clock is ticking down and India is still hunting for a victory are hard.</p> <p class="rtejustify">In the India–Belgium match in last year’s World Cup, Belgium scored the winner in the last thirty seconds. It came from a move that began from Sardara’s domain in the midfield. India had possession before its own striking circle, but failed to clear. The young forward Mandeep Singh tried to be cute by dribbling through the legs of the opposition. He ended up losing the ball, and India the match. It was a bad start to the campaign. Watching the other side score, Sardara threw his head back, looking up at the deep blue Dutch sky, and kept it together by an effort of will. At the post-match press conference, he chose not to dwell on the goal, saying only that, “We all have to learn on closing out a match.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">“It’s not about feeling the pressure,” he said to me eventually, grudgingly. “It’s trying not to commit the same mistakes time and again. Even I do it.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">There are times when Sardara does try to do too much. If India is down by a goal and breaks in the midfield aren’t coming easily, he is prone to suddenly act as the team’s lone ranger. He picks the ball up somewhere in the centre, trots past two or three players, and ignores his teammates in better positions. He rides on until he loses the ball, allowing the opposition to counter-attack.</p>  <p class="rtejustify">Later in the World Cup, when India played Malaysia, the opposition scored from precisely such an error. Sardara smiled when I brought it up, knowing that I was asking him to relive a moment that he would have preferred to erase from his memory. “I am trying not to over-possess the ball,” he said. “That’s where releasing it at the right time is so crucial.”</p> <p class="rtejustify"><strong style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">ANIL ALDRIN WANTS</strong><span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;"> Sardara to stay in the game until “at least 2020.” Sardara himself hopes to stay for a while yet, he told me. “I have learnt a lot from Teun de Nooijer”—the 39-year-old Dutch Olympian and two-time gold medallist, who still plays club hockey and is another one of Sardara’s heroes. De Nooijer, Sardara said, “made me understand that there is only one thing and that is fitness.”</span></p> <p class="rtejustify">But there are other factors in the longevity of a successful player: consistency and discipline. To be among the best in world hockey, players must be given a long rope to improve and gain experience, just as coaches must. India would do well to look at the experience of South Korea, a relatively young hockey nation, which won the 2000 Olympic silver medal under the aegis of Kim Sang Ryul, who coached the team for more than a decade. That long reign resulted in a strong and compact South Korean team, in which every player understood both Kim and his methods. There has been little opportunity for India to achieve anything like the same cohesion—a telling fact, since Kim himself was trained at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala, Punjab.</p> <p class="rtejustify">“We have to adjust to the coaches and their styles of play,” Sardara said when I asked about this, although he admitted that changing coaches often did confuse players. “We do have time until Rio,” he said. “I think we will do well with Rio.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">There is ample space for misguided optimism in Indian hockey. It has been a pattern, in recent years, for coaches to tell the media that they are “going for gold” on the world stage even though the team invariably ends up somewhere in the lower half of the rankings. Walsh broke that rule: following the Asian Games win, when asked about India’s Olympic chances he said, without hesitation, “I think if we finish in the top six, even finish sixth, it will be a great achievement.” There was a moment’s silence in the press conference. He had spoilt the Indian media’s penchant for headlines about “going for gold.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">“What I have seen till now, I do believe we will do well in Rio,” Sardara repeated, but then backtracked when I asked where on the podium he thought India would finish. “We need to wait and see what the coach wants,” he said.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Sport is played in the mind, and at no time more so than in the last minutes of a match in which the outcome is undecided. Over the years, India has lost matches even before stepping out onto the field, as coaches said things like “We will try and hold them”—essentially asking their teams to be cautious, and to keep the opposition’s goal counts low. By contrast, Sardara has taken to telling his players before games that they must go out and win. “Eighty percent of hockey is mental,” he told me. “When teams play against Messi, they know he will score. Against me, the opponent should know I will dodge him. That’s where we win the moment.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">After all, if there were no optimism in sport, it would hardly be worth playing. Call it naivety or foolishness, but sport is the last bastion of the pure: it lives on faith, and the belief, in spite of all evidence, that genuine talent, and the goodness it brings with it, can change or redeem a bad system. So if there is any hope of a catalyst for change in Indian hockey, it lies with its best player, irrespective of whether he is the last of the Sardars.</p></div> </div> <div class="views-field-phpcode"> <span class="field-content"><div class="shortbioview">Sundeep Misra has covered seven hockey world cups. He is the head of sports initiatives at Network 1.</div></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div></div><div class="detail-body"><div class="detailBody"><div id="paging-pager-5357" class="paging-pager-contents"><p class="rtejustify"><strong>THE KYOCERA AT THE HAGUE</strong> in the Netherlands is not one of hockey’s great venues. A few kilometres before you reach the stadium, it looms up ahead, looking like a warehouse that someone wrapped in tinfoil, with a deep gap cut in the middle. Late in the afternoon on the day of the final of the 2014 Men’s Hockey World Cup, thousands of cars were lined up outside the stadium in neat rows, like colourful planters. But the unmistakable thunder of fans cheering inside was missing; instead, you heard music blaring, interrupted by a man’s voice echoing through the stadium, drawing out the words: “Australia, once again, the world champions!”</p> <p class="rtejustify">It was 15 June 2014, and Australia had beaten—humiliated—the Netherlands 6-1. Some Australian players were running around the pitch, their national flag in hand. Another group was already surrounded by reporters. A few sat on the team bench, taking in their victory, prone to sudden bouts of hugging and back-slapping. It had been one of the most one-sided World Cup finals ever. Dutch fans draped in orange, their team’s colours, sat stunned, long after the final whistle had blown. In the fourteenth minute, they had been leading 1-0; then, “Big Dog” Chris Ciriello scored a hat-trick, and practically ended the game for the <em>Oranje</em>.</p> <p class="rtejustify">A short while later, I waited at one end of the stadium, next to the players’ lounge, whose huge glass doors were manned by security teams. Waiters bustled in with bottles of champagne, and Australian fans stood outside, waiting patiently for the players to emerge. It took time—World Cup victory celebrations tend to run long and raucous. Coaches usually send players out one by one, so that they can sign autographs, meet family and friends, and pose for pictures. That day, things were slightly different: the Australian coach, Ric Charlesworth, came out first.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Charlesworth was exactly the man I was waiting to see. Those in the crowd who recognised him rushed over to offer their congratulations and take pictures. A few officials of the International Hockey Federation, or FIH, on a cigarette break, walked over and pumped his hand vigorously. It was Charlesworth’s last day in hockey: earlier in the tournament, he had announced his retirement from coaching and management. “Time I devote myself to the family,” he said.</p> <p class="rtejustify">Before anybody else could drag him away, I led him to the side of a burger stand to raise a question I had been asking him for a while. Was India capable of producing world-class players on a regular basis? “On the day I win the World Cup, you want to ask questions about the Indian side?” Charlesworth said, with a wry smile. The tournament had ended a good while earlier for India, which finished ninth among the 12 competing teams.</p> <p class="rtejustify">I first asked Charlesworth the question in 2010, when the Men’s Hockey World Cup circus pitched up in India. The home team placed eighth in that tournament. It was also when I first asked him what he thought about India’s captain and most dangerous player, the midfielder Sardara Singh. Charlesworth has a habit of stalling on questions that he might answer positively, particularly when it comes to Indian hockey. He understood that I was speaking on behalf of people who were looking for something in which to place their faith, in a bleak time. “Looking for a good headline for your player!” he said, with a smile. “He is good—lot of strength in those legs. Let’s see where he reaches in four years.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">Four years later, at the Kyocera, a cheer went up as Simon Orchard came out of the players’ lounge. “He played well today,” Charlesworth remarked of him. “One of the key players to stop the Dutch midfield.”</p> <p class="rtejustify">“India?” I persisted.</p> <p class="rtejustify">He looked sideways at me, and huffed out a half-laugh. Charlesworth single-handedly took Australian women’s hockey to the pinnacle of the sport in the 1990s. In the present decade, he has led the Australian men’s team to two consecutive World Cup victories. You could call him the coach with the Midas touch. He understands talent in a way few do. He knows which players can make it and which players will not. (He prefers players who raise their levels of performance through sheer grit even if they aren’t naturally gifted.)</p> </div></div><div class="paging"><div class="links"><div class="go-to-page">Go to Page: </div><div class="item-list"><ul class="pager"><li class="pager-current first">1</li> <li class="pager-item"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh?page=0,1" title="Go to page 2" class="active">2</a></li> <li class="pager-item"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh?page=0,2" title="Go to page 3" class="active">3</a></li> <li class="pager-item"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh?page=0,3" title="Go to page 4" class="active">4</a></li> <li class="pager-ellipsis">…</li> <li class="pager-next"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh?page=0,1" title="Go to next page" class="active">next ›</a></li> <li class="pager-last last"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/holding-line-hockey-sardara-singh?page=0,9" title="Go to last page" class="active">last »</a></li> </ul></div></div></div></div> <div class="text-size-bottom"> <div class="views-as">View as</div> <a href="javascript:void(0);"><div class="single-page">Single Page</div><div class="multipage">Multiple Page</div></a></div> <div class="story-tags"> <div class="story-block1"><div class="view view-story-related-tag view-id-story_related_tag view-display-id-block_1 view-dom-id-2"> <div class="view-header"> <h3 class="subject-heading">More From This Section</h3> </div> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/gag-orders-how-far-can-indian-comedy-go">Gag Orders</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-2 views-row-even"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/after-aparanta">After Aparanta</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-3 views-row-odd"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/check-republic-madras">Check Republic</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-4 views-row-even"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/talk-town">Talk Of the Town</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-5 views-row-odd"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/avenger">The Avenger</a></span> </div> </div> <div class="views-row views-row-6 views-row-even views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-title"> <span class="field-content"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/government-apathy-india-aids-programme">High-risk Behaviour</a></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="story-block3"></div> <div class="story-block2"><div class="view view-story-related-tag view-id-story_related_tag view-display-id-block_2 view-dom-id-3"> <div class="view-header"> <h3 class="subject-heading">Keywords</h3> </div> <div class="view-content"> <div class="views-row views-row-1 views-row-odd views-row-first views-row-last"> <div class="views-field-tid"> <span class="field-content"></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="comment_count">READER'S COMMENTS [1]</div><script src="https://web.archive.org/web/20150701192654js_/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/sites/all/themes/caravanmag/js/floating-script.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <div id="comments"> <a id="comment-67090"></a> <div class="comment comment-published clear-block"> <h3></h3> <div class="submitted"> <div class="comment-name"> Dr P S M Chandran </div> <div class="comment-date">22 June 2015</div> <div class="comment-time">15:02 PM</div> </div> <div class="content"> A brilliant piece of write up by Sandeep Misra. Sardara might be one of the best in the world. But his presence will not be sufficient enough to produce a world class team. Watching Indians play, one is tempted to ask this question.; "Has India got a match winner in the team ?" . The answer is "No". Dhanraj Pillai was the last one. We have been "dream merchants"" in hockey for years . Hockey administrators and the media have been selling dreams about hockey to a non suspecting hockey lovers in our country. Pl take note that Sardara is ageing now. That is showing up in his game nowadays though he is still our best bet. There are two topographical errors in the article. Pakistan had won the World cup Gold in 1994 and not in 1985 ( Page-4). Bhaskaran and not Charanjit Singh was the Captain of the Gold winning Indian team at Moscow Olympics( Page-6). </div> <ul class="links"><li class="comment_reply first last"><a href="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/comment/reply/5357/67090">reply</a></li> </ul></div> <div class="box"> <h2>Leave comment</h2> <div class="content"><div id="comment-preview"></div><form action="/web/20150701192654/http://www.caravanmagazine.in/comment/reply/5357" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-1-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name-1">Name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name-1" size="30" value="" class="form-text required"/> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">Email: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" 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