Buck de India, say our hockey players

It is indeed sad that our hockey players had to stop practice to drive home their message.

I think to attract more talent on a consistent basis, the IHF or Hockey India or whatever the highest authority is now called, must create a contract system so that players have a basic sense of financial security. If cricketers can be paid lakhs of Rupees per match (even the 12th man, who may not even lay in most matches), why can’t our hockey players get maybe half or a third of that amount?

If raising funds is the problem, well, perhaps it is time to create an IPL for hockey, comprising players from India and the other main hockey playing nations like Germany, Australia, Spain, Pakistan, Holland, Malaysia, South Korea, New Zealand etc. Schedule it for a different period of time so that even TV channels are happy to cough up moolah for obtaining rights to live entertainment. And given that a hockey match takes less time than even a T20 match, one can have two matches every day.

Is anyone listening?