WHEN AZHAGAI EMBRACED HOCKEY Hockey is the national game
of our country. India has won
gold medal in Olympic Hockey no
fewer than eight times, more
than any other country in the
world. India has also won the
hockey World Cup once.
We have
produced the all-time-great hockey
player – Dayan Chand. Tamil Nadu has
contributed many distinguished hockey
players to the national team. Many
prestigious international hockey
tournaments, including the World Cup and
the Champions Trophy have been
successfully staged in India.
In spite of these national and state
merits, hockey has not quite caught on
with the youngsters of Azhagappapuram.
There has been a total lack of awareness
of hockey as apposed to games like
cricket. Against this backdrop, it's
significant to note that the people of
Azhagai were privileged to watch the
only hockey match ever played on their
soil. Naturally, it's worth recalling
that rare tussle, which ushered in a new
dawn for our village in sports.
It was sometime in the mid-sixties that
the historic hockey match was played at
Azhagai. The venue was the picturesque
square ground adjacent to the Western
bus-stop. Many middle-aged Azhagaites
would recall that this ground had
proudly hosted very many sport events,
musical extravaganzas, dramas, circus
shows, etc. in the bygone days. Now a
beautiful house stands on this plot.
The idea of playing a hockey match was
conceived by us, the school-going boys
then, like Naseri, Mani, Puckle,
Novamani, Victor, Sukumar, Ephren,
Ramanathan and the writer of this
article. We wanted to popularize the
game in the village.
With this idea in mind, we started
mobilizing a group of young lads of our
age living mainly in the western part of
the village. We managed to enlist around
twenty to undergo rigorous training in
field hockey.
This painstaking drill was conducted
during a summer. First and foremost, the
trainers gave us a lecture on hockey so
everyone understood the game. The twenty
guys were split into two teams and made
to train for three weeks under the
watchful eyes of the trainers. Hockey
sticks were, and indeed are, expensive
and hard to find. So we decided to make
do with the best available cast away
wooden sticks with a curve at the bottom
end available from the local wood
workmen. All we needed to do was to do a
little bit of chopping and shaping with
the help of a carpenter. We had been
grateful to the veteran wood workmen for
allowing us to use the cast away timber
sticks from time to time.
The trainers accomplished the onerous
task of imparting training methodically.
They concentrated step-by-step on the
whole gamut of the game like dribbling,
passing, scooping, shooting and other
such finer points as penalty corner and
penalty stroke conversions. The
strenuous training given helped the
coaches to unearth quite a few talents.
Once training completed, the first ever
hockey match at Azhagappapuram was
programmed to be played on a Saturday
late afternoon. It was a ten-men-a-side
match played over a duration of seventy
minutes with a ten minute breather in
the middle. A senior student of our
school with a fair amount of knowledge
in hockey officiated as the referee,
with a hooter in his mouth constantly.
Though the ground was not of standard
dimension or surface for hockey, it
eminently served the purpose as ours
were only junior level amateur teams.
It was a pulsating match with the young
and vibrant novices weaving through the
rival defences with the ball stuck to
their curved sticks as if magically.
During the course of the game, once when
the solid rubber ball was scoop-passed
by a player, it flew off course and fell
into a huge frying pan of Kuttanpillai,
who was frying pakoda in it behind his
hotel adjoining the hockey field. There
was a brief hold-up as the ball had to
be extricated from boiling oil and
thoroughly cleaned to remove the grease
on it before being put back into play.
The fried ball added spice and aroma to
the game. A little later in the game, as
the ball went out of play once, a stray
dog pounced on it and ran away holding
the ball in its mouth. A few
enthusiastic young spectators hustled
and bustled the dog to lose grip over
the ball and return it to play.
Some of the players sustained
lacerations trying too hard on the
field. First Aid was rushed to the field
to nurse the injured.
The match drew a huge crowd like magnet
attracting iron. Many thronged the edges
of the ground driven more by curiosity.
Quite a few guys had climbed the trees
standing on the field's perimeter to
have unimpeded view of the game. I can
vividly remember, the faces of many of
our contemporaries sitting in the front
row applauding the moves and counter
moves made by the rival team members.
The first half ended in a stalemate with
both teams missing scoring chances by a
whisker.
During the breather the players quenched
their thirst and re-energized themselves
for the second-half with ripe bananas
and salted lemon juice catered by
Chowkiyar shop. The interval also gave
us a chance to watch our door-kite that
we had started flying overnight high
over the ground. It gave us immense joy
to play beneath it. The kite was large
in size – as large as a normal size
door. It was dark yellow in colour with
a long tail in matching shade. We had
used bundles of string woven from
coconut fiber to fly it. One of our
playmates, Puckle, was standing about 50
meters south of Pallakulam flying the
kite. He had tied the rope of the kite
on the stem of a thespesia tree, lest he
would be lifted and carried in the air
by the giant kite, despite his
sturdiness. People were astonished to
see such a colossal kite flying so
gracefully.
When the game resumed after the break,
both teams intensified their attacking
prowess. But goals continued to be
elusive. The match ended, fittingly, in
a goal-less draw and the honors were
shared. It was an end, which reflected
the equality in the strength of the
rival teams. The Azhagaites embraced
hockey, briefly though.
Ironically, even though the first ever
hockey match was played on Azhagai soil
more than four decades ago, the second
one is yet to take place! The game
didn't quite inspire our folks, I
assume.
Hopefully, the up-and-coming youngsters
of Azhagai, taking a cue from the
initiatives and organizational skills
displayed by their old compatriots back
in time, will evince interest in hockey
and enhance the popularity of the game
in our village. That should be a fitting
tribute to the passionate men who
introduced hockey to Azhagai by playing
the lone game thus far on our soil.
Azhagai anecodotes
