Curtains for the Gill and Jothikumaran era ...

I have been obsessed by events that mark the closing of an era in the existence of human kind, hence the title.
Indian Olympic Association (IOA) yesterday gave out the strongest message to all Sporting Associations by dissolving the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) following grave corruption charges on it's Secretary.
IOA was under tremendous pressure from Federation of International Hockey (FIH) to intervene in the Hockey affairs of the country or else be prepared with dire consequences of 1) loosing the hosting of World Cup in 2010 and 2) De-recognizing of IHF by FIH. That would have meant Hockey doesn't exist in India when it comes to World Hockey.

Suresh Kalmadi, President, IOA, declared the decision and has appointed a team of 5 classy former international players to form the selection committee and assured a democratic set up (via elections) within 6 months.
At last, without much dispute, most of the Hockey circle people are jubiliant! Be it any reason, everyone 'hated' the whole system that. (Many were a part of that system and what did one do to clean it up is debateable). Alas, Chile debacle, World Cup 2010 withdrawl threat, International Hockey body intervention and a TV Channel sting operation proved conducive in the clean up work.

But I feel, this marks the start of tuftest times for Hockey.
There is lot of chance that history of 1994 is repeated. It was a low time when the supercop took over (democratically) and started reforming various aspects of the game. Few years later, it became a (power) game that had concern for everything in it but Hockey.

Here are my 2 cents on the future:

1) Get everything on paper.
2) Put up a thorough democratic system in place that cannot be exploited by power-hungry people. Have tenure and responsibilities fixed for all posts.
3) Do a short term, mid long term and long term planning for the game.
4) Develop a contract system for all the players and coaches. Put up things like: Code of Conduct, Match fees, Contract fees and things that bring across more credibility to the system.
5) Wake up all the de-funct State Associations and tighten up the screws if they don't perform.
6) Take steps to encourage Hockey at the grass root levels.
7) Take up and promote 'professionalism' in this game. For this, the people in power have to refrain from character assasination, personalised remarks on each other, forget the idea of punishing the people in the past and above all, learn to MOVE ON!
8) Second, just because a person has played great Hockey in his times doesn't entitle him to be a Sports Adminstrator! So, weigh people professionaly and not emotionally! There are ways to get the best of each one but don't put them in positions where they don't fit in.
9) Lastly, If you don't have any other model to work on, there is nothing wrong in learning from an existing successful model, Cricket.