Thirteen goals are an argument against looking away. India’s men opened the Asian Champions Trophy in Jalandhar by beating Bangladesh 13-0, a result recorded in public-service coverage of the match. For one evening, hockey supplied the easy pleasures cricket normally monopolises: goals frequent enough to interrupt dinner, a home crowd able to relax, and highlight packages that did not require explanation. I enjoyed it. I also distrust what happens next in Indian sports coverage. A lopsided victory is inflated into a declaration that the golden age has returned; then, when India meets a stronger opponent and struggles, the same audience discovers betrayal. Hockey deserves something sturdier than alternating nostalgia and outrage.
Bangladesh are not the standard by which India should measure Olympic ambition. That sentence is not disrespectful; it is competitive arithmetic. A developing side can be overwhelmed by India’s speed, circle entries and penalty-corner options while exposing little about how those weapons will function against an organised European defence or Australia’s pressure. The useful question is not whether thirteen goals were too many to celebrate. Celebrate all of them. The useful question is whether India used the match to rehearse patterns, distribute minutes and develop the ruthless habits that survive when chances become scarce.
Home advantage should build a home audience
Jalandhar is an intelligent venue because Punjab’s connection with hockey is lived rather than manufactured by a marketing department. Names, clubs and family histories give the sport local memory. But heritage alone cannot carry a modern spectator economy. A tournament must make attendance easy, publish schedules early, price tickets sensibly, engage schools and ensure broadcasts show viewers more than a blue pitch surrounded by empty seats. If a child attends one 13-0 win and cannot find a local pathway to play the following week, we have staged an event rather than built a sport.
Hockey’s rivalry with Pakistan shows both the strength and danger of relying on memory. The long record assembled by Olympics.com’s historical account captures a rivalry that once defined world hockey and still generates attention out of proportion to ordinary fixtures. I understand why broadcasters lean on it. Yet Indian hockey cannot organise its identity around beating Pakistan, especially when the global competitive centre has broadened. The teams that deny India major medals may be Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands or Australia. A fan culture educated only through subcontinental emotion is unprepared for the tactical and institutional standards that decide those matches.
What struck me in the Bangladesh rout was India’s obligation to remain serious after the score became absurd. Dominant teams can become careless: defenders advance for personal goals, structures dissolve and a match turns into an exhibition. The better use of superiority is precision. Can the side vary penalty-corner routines rather than merely repeat the strongest drag flick? Can forwards practise the second pass instead of shooting through traffic? Can substitutes enter without lowering the press? These details sound joyless beside thirteen goals, but they are how a rout becomes preparation rather than sugar.
The attention gap is a policy choice
People often tell me cricket receives attention because viewers want it, as though public appetite were rain. Appetite is cultivated. Cricket is scheduled, promoted, narrated and made socially legible every day. Viewers know fringe players, selection disputes and domestic statistics because a vast media machine teaches them to care. Hockey appears in bursts around the Olympics or a major India-Pakistan match, then editors conclude that audiences lack sustained interest. That circular logic would starve any sport.
The federation and broadcasters should package hockey without apologising for it. Explain pressing shapes with graphics. Let players speak beyond post-match clichés. Build recurring time slots. Produce short features on domestic centres such as Jalandhar and Odisha. Publish injury updates and selection reasoning consistently. Fans become attached when they can follow a story between tournaments, not when they are summoned every four years to prove patriotism.
Players outside cricket’s shadow also carry a heavier burden of perfection. A cricketer can fail for a series and remain a celebrity. A hockey team loses one knockout match and hears that funding has been wasted. This is both unfair and strategically foolish. Elite sport advances through repeated exposure to strong competition, including defeats. Accountability matters—federations must disclose spending and coaching decisions—but the demand that every investment instantly yield gold is not accountability. It is impatience dressed as auditing.
From a scoreline to a system
I would use a home Asian Champions Trophy to do three things. First, fill the stadium with young players from nearby districts and give their coaches access to clinics, not merely complimentary seats. Second, collect spectator data: who came, how they bought tickets, whether they watched subsequent matches and what prevented return visits. Third, connect the event to local leagues with published fixtures and streaming. The tournament should leave behind habits, contacts and audiences.
India also needs stronger Asian opposition, which means resisting the temptation to treat regional development as somebody else’s charity project. If Bangladesh, China, Malaysia and other sides improve, India receives more meaningful matches without flying across continents. Coaching exchanges and regular age-group competition would serve Indian interests. Dominance over weak neighbours produces impressive scoreboards; a competitive continent produces medal-ready teams.
There is a counterargument that a 13-0 win is precisely the wrong moment for institutional gloom. Why not simply enjoy a sport offering joy? I agree with the premise and reject the conclusion. Enjoyment and seriousness are not enemies. I can cheer a reverse-stick finish and still ask why the player’s next domestic match is difficult to locate. In fact, asking the second question is how we protect the first pleasure from becoming an occasional novelty.
The Indian men have earned a public that understands them in more than Olympic fortnight. They should be praised when fluent, questioned when tactically poor and followed through the unglamorous months between medals. That is normal sports culture. Cricket gets it automatically; hockey receives it as a limited-period offer.
So yes, thirteen goals were fun. The players did their job emphatically, and the Jalandhar crowd received a show. But the true victory will not appear in the tournament table. It will be visible if more children enter local programmes, if broadcasts retain viewers for less glamorous fixtures, and if India reaches its next hard match with both tactical discipline and a knowledgeable audience behind it. Hockey does not need another evening of borrowed national attention. It needs the infrastructure of caring on an ordinary Tuesday.
