Before you continue to wonder what the title of this post means , lets consider a hypothesis, or should I say a sporty-hypothesis.

Suppose the Indian Cricket Team goes to the World Cup in the West Indies in 2007, performs miserably, has no chance of making it to the super six, has just one consolation win in the last match of the tournament and invariably ends up finishing second last, how would the Indian cricket fan react to such a performance. I will stop short and just say that the Indian cricket fan will be extremely heart broken and disappointed.

In no way am I making a prediction that the Indian cricket team will fare that badly in the world cup, being a cricket buff that I am and for my own mental sanctity I hope not. However the above describes how the Indian Hockey team fared in the recently concluded World Cup, which ended in Monchengladbach, Germany, on Sunday. Yes I am talking about Hockey, India’s national sport and what happened in the world cup was a complete Hockery (Hockey + Mockery).

In fact it doesn’t even come as a surprise to me that the kids of today don’t even know that Hockey is India’s national sport and not Cricket. I won’t blame them, growing up on a steady diet of cricket on TV and idolizing stars like Dravid and Tendulkar has led to complete ignorance on the grooming of talent in India’s national game.

During the freedom struggle and for some years after independence, India was the dominant force in Hockey. In the period from 1928 - 1956, India won 6 consecutive gold medals in the Olympics. During the Golden Era as it was called, India played 24 Olympic matches, won all 24, scored 178 goals (at an average of 7.43 goals per match) and conceded only 7 goals. The dominance of India in hockey during that period might have led to it being declared as India’s national sport. However I seriously feel that the time has come to rethink. Since 1980 we have done nothing of note in the field of Hockey.Even though the the IHF (Indian Hockey federation) thought it had done wonders by instituting a Premiere Hockey League (PHL), to encourage spectator interest in the sport, all their efforts have fallen short or should I say in vain.

So clearly to avoid the igonomy of such humiliation on the future, we have to rethink whether we should continue with Hockey as our national sport. If you think so too, then let me know what can replace Hockey as India’s national sport, your comments are highly welcome.

Oh yeah and best wishes to the Indian cricket team for the remaining two matches in the DLF cup. Guys please don’t give us any more misery. We all have come to realize that the de-facto national game is cricket and a loss there would be very hard to swallow.