Yes, India has a National Ice Hockey team. "Thanks to the news that came in all national media’s last week about the cash strapped team, now the Indians came to know that we have a national team which participates in many international tournaments", said Mr Harjinder Singh, General Secretary of Ice Hockey Association of India (IHAI) in an exclusive chat with IndiansinKuwait.com.
Cricket has dominated a million hearts in our country and continues to do so. But the downside is that non-cricket sports have suffered. Our national ice hockey team, which has been playing for the last 6 years, is struggling to survive without any proper facility for the players to practice the game.
"This championship in Kuwait gave us a good international experience. It’s not all about winning the game, but getting an international exposure which will improve our team", said Harjinder Singh. India played four matches here against Kuwait, Oman, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan. "While all other teams are getting trained in professional rinks throughout the year, our team could practice only 15 days in the only rink in Delhi, which is one fourth of the actual rink size. Practicing in small rinks resulted in difficulty in positioning of the players in this big rink. Also the side board in international rink causes physical injuries as our players don’t have the experience of playing in such rinks of international standard. So half of the concentration of our players goes in not to get injured, which effected the game here, he said. As we lack rink facility in India, in the whole year only two months during the winter season, our team practices at frozen ponds in the Himalayan regions of Ladakh. But playing in winter, we get neutralized as the temperature there is below zero". "We had a rink in Uttarakhand which had hosted the SAF games in 2011, however, the rink got shut after that and is not available for us now. I hope the Uttarakhand government will rethink about that and will open up the rink for us,” Mr Singh said.
In spite of being a national team, they are not paid by the Indian government for representing India in Kuwait. Most of their equipments have been gifted by friends or well-wishers. The crowd funding campaign initiated by the team got a good response. "Even though the ice hockey is a North Indian game, a big part of the support came from South India. Corporates such as Mahindra group, Micromax, South Indian Shelters etc came forward in a big way to help the team. Thanks to the supports, today all of the players are using brand new skates and Gear," said Mr Singh. Most of the players are from the Northern region. It’s a village sports there during the winter. Good players are inducted in Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
We are happy that we got a good experience here in Kuwait, which will definitely benefit the team, Singh said. Nowadays in many of the big malls in India they are building Ice Skating rinks as part of their entertainment business. This will help more and more children to get trained in Ice skating. Our larger plan is to look out for such children from early age and train them in Ice Hockey, Singh said. Singh is optimistic that the game has a future in India. “In 1983, the BCCI lacked funds to sponsor the Indian team’s travel to England. Back then, Lata Mangeshkar organized a concert in Mumbai, and the proceeds were handed over to the BCCI. Three decades later, we at IHAI are facing a similar predicament,” he says. Let us hope that the Ice Hockey in India will reach level what Cricket enjoys today in coming years.
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