Some hockey rules need revamping: Gill

Add as a preferred source on Google

Sydney: Indian hockey is riding a mild wave of success these days as the men's team involved in Sydney Olympics has, so far, performed in a satisfactory manner.

The Indians have still got a fairly long way to go before claiming the top honors. But after the win over Spain in a group 'B' match on Saturday, Indian hockey followers are feeling a bit elated that their team has a pretty good chance of qualifying for the next round and, thus, might secure a medal after two decades.

India last won a gold medal in men's Olympic hockey competitions at Moscow in 1980. It has been a heart-breaking famine of hockey medals since then.

Indian Hockey Federation president K P S Gill, a former police chief of Punjab, is in Sydney these days to oversee Indian team's performance in the hockey competition.

He talked to India Abroad News Services on Sunday regarding India's further prospects in the Olympic competition. Excerpts of the interview:

Are you satisfied with the Indian performance so far?

Yes, our team has performed well so far except the match against Korea.

What do you think went wrong in that match?

The boys were tired after an intensively-contested match against Australia. Usually one gets 36-hours rest before the next engagement, but we did not get sufficient recovery time for the match against the Koreans.

Do you think India would be able to sustain current form and tempo till the final?

Absolutely. We have more than sufficient time till the next match against Poland and the boys have been performing well. So there should not be any problem.

India's forwards like Dhanraj Pillay and Mukesh Kumar are due for retirement after the Olympics, do you think India would be able to find appropriate replacements for these two stalwarts?

Yes, we would be able to find good replacements from our pool of hockey players and, anyway, they are not going to retire immediately.

Australian coach Terry Walsh has asked for changes in the existing penalty corner rules stating that it unfairly helps few teams like Holland and Germany, do you agree with his assertion?

Yes, he is right instead of teams depending upon penalty corners we need to have more field goals to make the game more interesting.

The authorities also need to change the rule which allows all the 11 players to go behind the 25-metre line defence. This happened to us in the match against Korea.

Is there any such move already or you are going to ask for it?

I would ask for this change in the 25-metre line rules.

The Australian coach has also alleged in a that teams from the sub-continent, especially India, play in a rather aggressive manner which has caused injuries to his players in some recent engagements. What is your opinion regarding this allegation?

We are totally against such body-play tactics. We have made our position clear on earlier occasions too. It should be prohibited from the game. As far as aggressive play by Indian team is concerned, in my opinion, it is ill founded as in a recently- concluded Azlan Shah Hockey Tournament in Malaysia we were awarded Fairplay Trophy.

India is stated to be planning to revamp its sports policy. What do you think should be the essential components of the new sports policy?

Instead of wasting our precious resources on various sports disciplines, India should concentrate on just a selected few like hockey and athletics. We cannot afford to develop sports like football as India is nowhere in the first 100 international teams.

We were coming up really well in archery sometime ago but it has, for some reasons not known to me, taken a back seat once again.

Hockey continues to be our best bet as we have been qualifying for the hockey Olympic finals ever since 1928 and it is no mean achievement.

According to a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics finding based on per capita figures, India is the worst sporting country in the world. Do you agree with this finding?

It must have been about Olympics-related sports achievements. We are not very competent in those disciplines but we have some exceptionally good sportspersons in some other disciplines like billiards, chess and golf.

India Abroad News Service