| Categories | ||
  POLITICS & GOVERNANCE[2001 onwards] POLITICS & GOVERNANCE[1996-2000] MOVIESMUSICSPORTSBUSINESSNATIONAL SECURITYINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRSINFOTECHSOCIETYSTYLELIVETRAVELSCIENCEELECTION'99ELECTIONS '98 | ||
'Any youngster who wants to represent India in the Olympics should play hockey'October 25, 2001: Indian Hockey Federation president K P S Gill is an elated man these days. After all, his efforts to nurture talent from the grass root level are paying off, with India winning the men's junior World Cup in Hobart, Australia, last Sunday. Earlier, in June, the Indian sub-junior team had won the under-18 Asian title in Kuala Lumpur.The former director general of police, Punjab, who was on rediff.com chat on Thursday afternoon, attributed the international exposure the juniors had been given during the last couple of years to the good showing. The complete chat transcript. K P S Gill : Good days are back for Indian hockey and I hope that we are able to retain them for a long, long time. vishnu : Is the Indian senior team totally out of form? K P S Gill : They are not out of form. We expect to do well in the forthcoming World Cup in Kuala Lumpur, and we have started a training camp already. Mukund : Sir, I am from Bangkok Please express your views about the recent victory of the Indian junior hockey team. K P S Gill : Well, it has been a great victory. The boys played extraordinary well and we were regarded as the best team of the tournament. We had one bad match, otherwise the boys played very well. Kaps : Have you ever been involved in meeting the challanges of miltancy in Kashmir? K P S Gill : No. sahu : Does the success of this team mean curtain on the careers of Pillay and Mukesh? K P S Gill : It is very difficult to say whether it is curtains for them, but one can certainly say that unless they do well during training and practice sessions they stand to lose their place in the team. hero : We are observing that Indian hockey has reached its lowest position in the last 35 years due to change in playing technique, from dribbling and short passes, to fast hochey. Do you think that this victory in the junior championship will manage to change or reverse graph of our downfall to glory? And how we will sustain to remain at top in coming years with no good sports enviornment in our country? K P S Gill : Lot of changes have been initiated during the last seven-eight years by the Indian Hockey Federation and the government in training relating to hockey and these have now started bearing fruit. This is not a momentary victory; as you know that during the last junior World Cup we were runners-up. Five of those players were in the senior team. I expect the 18 players who have brought the junior World Cup home to continue playing hockey for the country for another four to eight years; and considering their dedication and commitment and grit I am sure that they would be able to maintain the winning spree in future years as well. S Mishra : Mr. Gill, I work in Australia and it is great to hear good news of revival of Indian glory in hockey, Congratulations K P S Gill : Thanks. saarth : Congratulations to you Mr Gill for giving India it's World Cup victory. Can you share with us how did you manage to do this. K P S Gill : About two years back I found that under 18 team had great talent and I approached the Indian Oil corporation to take up these boys and start a hockey team of their own. So that these boys could keep on playing together and five boys from this team graduated to the under 21 team and all of them played exceptionally well. Three of them were in the forwardline and they have developed great understanding. I decided to give them a lot of foreign exposure so that they could adjust to the type of hockey played by other junior teams of the world. This exposure helped them. Not only to the 18 who made it to the team, but almost to a similar number who were waiting at the gate. This gave us a talented nucleus and increased the level of competition within the players wanting to make it to India juniors. DamanYadav : Hello Gill Saab! Mr. Rajinder Singh ko senior team ka coach kyon nahin banate? Shayad we bhi tournament jiten. K P S Gill : Cedric has been coaching the Indian senior hockey team for awhile now and he would be interacting with Rajinder Singh on a constant basis in days to come. I have organized a meeting tomorrow between these two and some members of the IHF to work out the nitty gritty of this. saarth : Sir, why there was no telecast of the junior World Cup? How the game will get it's popularity if it's not shown on television? What are you doing on this issue? K P S Gill : This was indeed a grave lapse but even the television channels in Australia itself were not showing any of these matches. But they were being shown on the internet. And I was told that more then a million people access the internet to keep up with the latest in the game. Unfortunately, in countries like India, internet is still a luxuary and we should have been able to show it on Doordarshan. Which because of various reasons it could not be done. Unfortunately, there is not even a video recording of the match. All this took place because the tournament was held in a place which has a large following of hockey lovers and every day the stadium used to be full; it is also a remote place and not easy to reach. We are taking steps to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen in future. ravi : Sir Why is that inspite of all the sucess that the Indian hockey team has had, we don't have a sponsor for the team like cricket? K P S Gill : We have had an occasional sponsorship for hockey but unfortunatley not comparable to what cricket has got. We have today Castrol as sponsor for the senior team till the next Olympics.We now expect to get a sponsor for the junior team too till the next junior World Cup. We are negotiating with a few companies for sponsorship for the other three levels -- that is under-14, 16 and under 18 teams, and are very hopeful of getting these. The most encouraging thing has been the revival of interest amongst the youngsters of the country and the number of committed and talented youngsters turning to hockey is remarkably large. A slogan for sports loving young boys is that if you want to participiate in the Olympics play hockey for India. And this has caught on. kk : Namaste Shri Gill. First let me congradulate the Indian hockey (junior) team and the hockey federation for this wonderful effort. If the youngsters can do it why can't the seniors do it?. Is there an attitude problem that develops amongst our senior players, ego, pay, family commitment etc. K P S Gill : I think you have very intutively listed the faults of the seniors and this has happened over the years and the fact that they were losing tournament after tournament did not agur well for their morale.After having observed this I started inducting more and more youngsters into the team and I think you would be glad to know that out of 18 players who played in the junior World Cup, 14 have played at the senior level abroad during one tour or the other over the past two years in which they did very well. I want that all players should develop the qualities both physical and mental which the members of this team displayed during the Hobart tournament. sureshss : Sir,Mr. Ashish Balal, former goalkeeper, said few days back that it's better for hockey to be headed by some professional rather than by a person who can just generate some money. What you have to say about that? How's your relationship with Mr. Balal and Dhanraj? Can they both be back in the team? K P S Gill : Ashish Balal has been out of the team for a number of years. I have been asking him to take up coaching now and he has been in two minds. At times agreeing to it and then shying away. Both Ashish and Dhanraj are in the habit of making statements which play to the galleries, and then coming and apologising for the same. So one should take all their statements with a pinch of salt. In any case, both of them have taken up an excellent project to devote their time for coaching youngsters, who can join these coaching classes in the first week of November. This is in a way a very good development because this would enable them to give to hockey what they got out of it. ramu : Mr.Gill, Do you think that the administrators in India are given more importance than the players themeselves (e.g.Indian Olympic Association K P S Gill : Not at all. If you would read reports about the reception given to the victorius Indian team as well as see the television clips on the same, you would find that the total limelight was for the players, which is as it should be. anilrao : Mr.K.P.S.Gill, Sir, first I want to congratulate you on this historic achivement.What are plans you have to corporatise Indian hocky like cricket? How do you cash in on this win to generate interest and money for hockey? K P S Gill : We have already explained the entire details in an earlier question. shailesh : Sir, is it true that the Champions Challenge tournament has been relcoated from India. Why has this step has been taken? Which countries were not willing to come to India? Can you shed some light on this issue? K P S Gill : I had a meeting with the president and seceretary general of the FIH in Hobart on the day before the final and we mutually agreed that since some of the counries were unwilling to come and play in India because of their apprehensions, however misplaced they might have been, about the security situation in India, it was advisable to shift the venue to some other country which was some distance away from Afganistan. The new venue has still not been selected, but it is likely to be finalized in next few days. I cannot disclose the names of the countries who expressed their inability to come and play in India as this information was disclosed to me in confidence. Thiru : Sir, how can we bring the taste of our youth from commercialised cricket to hockey? K P S Gill : As I have answered in a question earlier, our slogan is: any youngster who wants to represent India in the Olympics should play hockey. And this is catching on. rajeev : Mr. Gill, can you give some solution on Kashmir. K P S Gill : I feel I can. But let us see what the future brings. I find today that I have been asked more questions on Kashmir than on Indian hockey but I have studiously avoided answering questions on Kashmir and answered nly questions relating to Indian hockey because that was the subject of today's chat. If Rediff.decides to have a chat on Kashmir I'll respond to whatever you ask on Kashmir. But let that be on another day. Thank you and bye.
|
