For many decades, as far back as the oldest Indians alive today can remember, the Olympics for India meant hockey. For most of the new millennium, other athletes - weightlifters, shooters, wrestlers, boxers, badminton players - filled Olympic-sized holes and kept us replete. The hockey team became a sideline act at the Games, returning to public notice only in Tokyo 2021 with an Olympic hockey medal after 41 years.
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In Paris on Thursday, with the country and its contingent beaten down and left disconsolate by fourth-place finishes and the visceral gutting after Vinesh Phogat's disqualification, the Indian hockey team came through a tense and scrappy bronze medal contest against Spain.
The manner in which the Indian team have performed through their Paris 2024 campaign, sometimes nervily scatty, sometimes reassuringly smooth, was marked by an escalation of quality and purpose over the last ten days. It kept sending out the message that delivered the bronze today. Believe, it said. Never stop believing.
As is now well known, Tokyo and Paris are the first back-to-back Olympic medals after Mexico City 1968 and Munich 1972. To half the population of India today, 1968 and 1972 are pre-history. It is many lifetimes away but, in many ways, it is still yesterday. To those for whom hockey was central to India's Olympic identity, 1968 and 1972 is a link that has not been broken, despite a four-decade absence of medals.
Of the millions who remember Moscow 1980 from their youth for what it was and what it felt like, many are grandparents today. They endured that yawning abyss until Tokyo, never forgot and never let anyone forget. They continued demanding that the sport find its way out of its self-created darkness. Because before cricketers or footballers, it was hockey that, in Amsterdam 1928, sent the first team called India out into in the world. And, after 1947, hockey was the athletic language with which a young country had communicated in the Olympic world.
The Indian team's place on the podium in Tokyo and Paris means that that language - not merely that of a wider audience and deeper pockets - is being heard again. These back-to-back medals makes it safe to say that India's eight Olympic golds are not a burden that our players today carry around slumped shoulders. Those golds are mile markers visible in the distance on the long road that lies ahead.
It is also important that India are seen and continue to be seen as competitive, relevant and dangerous in world hockey today. In terms of physicality, technicality and having finally binned that endless debate about which style is to be adapted - eastern western European oriental. The style adopted by the team in Paris was the Harmanpreet style on the drag flick and the PR Sreejesh style in goal and both served the Indians handsomely. Move on, everyone.
The perception of Indians as temperamental wizards and physical pushovers has been set aside. While reporting on the Great Britain versus Germany group match, the BBC live blog report thoughtfully remarked that while the result didn't affect qualification into the knockouts, the winner "would not have to play India."
India's 13th hockey medal at the Olympics - no other men's team have won more ���� �� https://t.co/2HDER3RetS | #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/8fDszOUfNf
- ESPN India (@ESPNIndia) August 8, 2024
It was a more than fair call - in the quarter final against GB, down to ten men for 44 minutes, India rose from the netherworld in an iron-nerved defensive performance to win on penalties. After piling onto Sreejesh and the tea, coach Craig Fulton growled into the camera, "Never doubt us." Harmanpreet's team had aimed to go one better than Tokyo. After defeat to world champions Germany in a blistering semi-final, remaining on the podium became paramount, no matter what.
No medal in any other championship means as much Indians as an Olympic medal. Ask anyone in India whether they would exchange a Hockey World Cup title for an Olympic medal and you would be laughed out of town.
The Olympic podium will continue to give Indian hockey the ripple effect that the sport needs to stay vibrant in a country bursting with athletic options today. The medal ensures that the conversation around the sport is about quality and competitiveness and the next big event and it hopefully keeps old tropes of diva-tantrums, faction-fighting and regional rivalries off the priority lists.
There is much to be done about Indian hockey and many holes remain to be filled. A busier competitive calendar, the return of a professional league, the institution of professional payment systems for both men and women are paramount. The latest generation of hockey faithful will be surprised to learn that an Indian Premier Hockey League first ran from 2005 to 2008, three years before the IPL. There is much hope that the reborn Hockey India League, scheduled for December, will not fizzle out like it did in 2017.
The Olympic bronze will re-ignite the desire to push higher, to dream of Gold Number Nine and to plan for Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032. For all that is said about the domination of cricket in national consciousness, ad spend, rights value and time on TV, there will always be room in Indian hearts for the country's hockey team.
This Olympic medal is Indian hockey's bear-hug (or as our players call it, jhappi), back to us. Believe. Never stop believing.