Coincidence

Over time I have noticed a few curious coincidences between the fortunes of the English football team and India’s Hockey team.

1. I will start with a weak one. Every four years, they are expected to win the world cup; when realistically speaking they would be lucky to get anywhere near the semi-finals.

But the major similarities between these teams are not in terms of what they do on the field, but what they end up doing off the field (i.e. injuries, off-field distractions).

2. 1998 Football World Cup: Gazza, the best English player in god knows how many generations, is not selected to play in the world cup. Why did the Brits even bother to send a team if Gazza wasn’t going to be there.

1998 Hockey World Cup:
Rajiv Mishra, a forward who had “a legend in the making” written all over him, gets injured right before the world cup (What happened to him after that is the reason why India no longer wins anything in hockey, but that is another story).

3. 2002 Football World Cup: A clearly half fit David Beckham led England in the World Cup. There is no shame in losing to Brazil, but the manner of their capitulation was shameful.

2002 Hockey World Cup: Disaster struck in the form of the coach (read Cedric D’Souza).

4. 2006 Football World Cup: Rooney’s injury and the whole media circus that surrounded it. And to top it all, their manager’s huge gamble in taking Theo Walcott to the world cup when he wasn’t deemed good enough to play in the EPL by Arsene Wenger.

2006 Hockey World Cup:
This is what happened to Sandeep Singh a month before the world cup.

5. English manager tries to cut a deal with a phoney-arab and is caught with his pants down.

Secretary of Indian Hockey Federation accepts money on camera to ensure that one player was selected in the Indian hockey team.

6. 2010 Football World Cup: Escapades of John Terry, Ashley Cole. Injury to Rio Ferdinand (he has been out of form in any case).

2010 Hockey World Cup: Players are forced to boycott a hockey camp just to ensure that they are paid for playing in tournaments which were held months ago. Then the players are accused of demanding money to play in a charity match.


And in both these cases, we have an administration whose defining characteristic is their incompetence.