Golden days of Indian hockey round the corner: Aslam Sher Khan

After removing KPS Gill, Indian Olympic Association (IOA) constituted a five-member ad-hoc selection panel headed by former Olympian and union minister Aslam Sher Khan. In an interview with Zeenews.com’s Biswajit Jha, Sher Khan reveals blueprint to breath fresh life into Indian hockey again.

Indian hockey touched its nadir when the team failed to qualify for the Olympics for the first time in eighty years. To add to their woes, former secretary of Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) K Jyothikumaran, the right hand man of former IHF president KPS Gill, was caught on TV accepting bribe to select a player in the national squad. These disgraceful incidents compelled Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to step in and dismiss IHF and sack KPS Gill, whose resignation was being sought by all and sundry. The IOA then constituted a five-member ad-hoc selection panel headed by former Olympian and union minister Aslam Sher Khan. In an interview with Zeenews.com’s Biswajit Jha, he reveals blueprint to breath fresh life into Indian hockey again.

Excerpts: What are your short term and long term goals? We have two immediate concerns: We have Commonwealth Games after two years from now. We would also host World Cup Hockey in 2010 if FIH allows us to do so. We need to qualify for these two big events. Doing well in these events are our immediate challenges. We have to build a good team for these two events. We have to choose a pool of players. We have to have a good balance of youth and experience.
We have many other goals and plans in mind that we will disclose once we are ready with something concrete. What will be the criteria for choosing the national team? Earlier there used to be a bunch of 50-60 players and the team was selected as if they were playing musical chairs. There have been instances when a player was selected for an international event despite not even having played domestic hockey. This won’t happen now and we will select the team after several rounds of trials.
Players like Gagan Ajit Singh and Arjun Halappa, who were sidelined during Gill’s regime, would be taken into consideration. What’s your take on Gill’s ouster?
It’s a historic step. For this I would like to congratulate IOA president Suresh Kalmadi and Sports Minister MS Gill. They did a great job to revive Indian hockey. Will sacking Gill be enough to improve Indian hockey? Fifty per centof the work has been done by the sacking of Gill. For the remaining half, we have to set a goal and work hard towards achieving that goal. God willing, we will again be the best in the world.
Will this new selection panel be able to change India’s fortunes? For the first time in history former players are involved in India’s hockey administration. We will try to bring back India’s past glory. Our first priority will be to make the administration accountable and to bring transparency in team selection process. What’s your take on the TV sting which showed former IHF secretary Jyothikumaran accepting bribe? Watching IHF secretary K Jyothikumaran accepting bribe to select a player in the national squad was really shocking. The dismal state Indian hockey is in has its roots in this sort of corruption. How can a team perform when there is fraud in the selection itself? India have been suffering from this problem for the past 14 years. We don’t have sufficient astroturfs. How will this problem be solved? Astroturfs are really costly. Hockey has always been a common man’s game. But we could do without astroturfs if we can encourage our youngsters towards hockey. The great Dhyanchand once said that no team can stop those, who can play on the uneven fields, when they play on astroturfs. But we need astroturfs. For this we will have to sit with the Sports Ministry and will have to chalk out a plan to come up with more astroturfs. Federation of International Hockey (FIH) is not happy with the state of Indian hockey. They have even threatened to scrap ‘Promoting Indian Hockey Project’ and World Cup Hockey 2010 which India was to host. How do you plan to address these two issues? We had informal talks with FIH. After the suspension of IHF and Gill, now they are happy. There is neither any threat to the project, nor to 2010 World Cup. We are thankful to FIH for showing interest to improve Indian Hockey. Do we have sufficient infrastructure to organize World Cup in 2010?

If we can organize Commonwealth Games, what’s the problem in organizing World Cup Hockey? How will you plan to utilize the talent of Richard Charlesworth, who is considered to be a very good coach? We are lucky to have Charlesworth as a technical director. We will certainly use his technical acumen in better ways. What’s your plan to improve the grassroot level of hockey? We will still have sufficient talent at the grassroots level. We have to organize more local level tournaments from where players will gradually come up. The previous regime headed by Gill destroyed the grassroot hockey in India. They didn’t even organize national hockey tournament for some years. What does one need to do to market Indian hockey in a better way, say like cricket? Hockey can’t be compared with cricket because cricket is not a game. It’s a ‘tamashaa’. We will sit together and decide what’s to be done. Would you like to take help from Bollywood superstars like Shah Rukh Khan to popularise Indian hockey We welcome everybody. Be it Bollywood stars or common man. Gill said that the team you chose for Azlan Shah Cup is almost the same they selected earlier during their regime? We didn’t have sufficient time for selecting the team for Azlan Shah. We had to send the list in a hurry. But we tried to select a team with a good mix of youth and experience.