By Sundeep Misra
 
It took fourteen years for us to bury KPS Gill. On a hot June afternoon in 1994, Gill, then DGP Punjab Police, hurtled to power as the President of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). Most of us applauded; we believed that the ‘gun’ would be the answer to the medal drought at the Olympics and World Cup.
 
A fifth place in the 1994 Sydney World Cup raised the hope that we were a step away from the semi-finals. Atlanta came in 1996 and the Olympics team was captained by Pargat Singh. Not many knew that the coach Cedric D’Souza didn’t want him in the team but Gill persisted. Cedric had to take him and later admitted privately that the full back position was the weakest link. India finished eighth. Gill blamed the umpiring, not for the first time.
 
By then, Gill loved the platform. Taking snide shots at journalists, talking about his hockey-playing family, trashing the pre-astroturf era players, sacking a coach and key players of the 1998 Asian Games gold medal winning team, Gill did everything but the right thing. Matthew Hayden wouldn’t have been off the mark if he called him “an obnoxious old weed.”
 
Gill lived a narcissist’s dream. After India lost the 1997 Milton Keynes Junior World Cup final to Australia by a slender 2-3 margin, Gill trashed the IHF and threatened to launch an Asian league. After the juniors reached their first World Cup final Gill was asked if he’d want to start a junior league. He lashed out, “India doesn’t need a junior league. We will be in the top four of the 1998 senior World Cup.”
 
The Indian team arrived in Utrecht for the 1998 World Cup with extra baggage — an injured captain Dhanraj Pillay. India was thrashed and left to lick their wounds at the ninth spot. Gill said, “We are preparing for the 2000 Sydney Olympics.”
 
By then, he was already swooning over the wonder that was himself. He had already cast himself as the lead player in the tearjerker: “Save Indian Hockey”. The players were the extras. India won the 1998 Asian Games. The players asked for money. In return, they were sacked, along with coach MK Kaushik; traces of the DGP in the IHF president. Coach Bhaskaran was roped in and India came within a whisker of an Olympic semi-final. Gill blared, “We were 45 seconds away.” India wins the 2001 Junior World Cup at Hobart. Gill dreams, dismantles most of the Sydney Olympics team and inducts juniors. At the 2002 World Cup, India finish 10th and India became the first nation in hockey history to sack their coach, Cedric D’Souza, midway.
 
A second grade coach, Gerhard Rach, takes us to the seventh spot in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Everready coach Bhaskaran is brought back and he takes us to the 11th spot in the 2006 World Cup. Later, India finishes fifth in the Asian Games. Joaquim Carvalho wins a couple of bronze medals and thinks he could make it to the podium in Beijing. England carve us out at Santiago and for the first time in Indian hockey history, the men’s hockey team do not participate in the Olympics. Gill says, “We will prepare for the 2010 World Cup. Hockey is not instant coffee.”
 
The die was cast after IHF secretary K. Jothikumaran was caught accepting a bribe to induct a player into the national team. Elected in the afternoon as IHF president at Bhopal, Gill was sacked that evening in New Delhi. By then he had destroyed the careers and morale of more than 150 players; more than 18 coaches had been sacked and a man of the stature of Ric Charlesworth was left holding his CV like a bumbling graduate desperate for a first job. Worse, Indian hockey was left bleeding, a comatose patient on a respirator.
 
(Courtesy, Tehelka)

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