In 1980, the United States led a team of friendly nations to boycott the Summer Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. So, 66 nations including the Netherlands, West Germany, Canada, Argentina, Malaysia, Pakistan, Norway, Philippines, Japan, Australia and New Zealand did not participate in hockey. Some of them like Australia and New Zealand sent athletes only. So, gold for India then was a foregone conclusion. Only 80 countries, including India, then a great ally of the Soviets took full part. Even in the absence of other strong hockey teams, India had to slog to scoop the gold medal by defeating Spain in a neck-and-neck 4-3 battle.
In the 1960 Rome Olympics, Pakistan had snatched the gold by defeating India 1-0. Thus had ended the Indian hockey supremacy across six Olympics in 32 years between 1928 and 1960. Even after Independence, India had remained hockey monarch from 1948 to 1956. So practically India managed to grab a Olympic hockey medal after 57 years in 2021.
The 1980 gold was like one ordinary horse racing against ten mules and winning easily. Indian hockey deteriorated even more after the walkover ‘no competitor in sight win’ in Moscow. Crcumstances changed and the Soviet empire crumbled in the early 1990s. Gradually, India and America got closer. The root cause of the Afghan woe of today was in fact planted by the Soviet Union in 1979.
The then arrogant USA, only to counter the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, had created an evil force called the Taliban meaning ‘student’. This evil entity incidentally has its origin in Pakistan where some religious fundamentalists gave it birth. Taliban is essentially Pakistani in letter and spirit. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was fiercely condemned by the international community.
The Soviet strategists that guided President Brezhnev persuaded him to believe that the intervention would be quick and uncontested because US President Jimmy Carter was too engrossed in the ongoing hostage crisis in Iran and had no time for Afghanistan. But in reality, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan led to an extended conflict in Central Asia; and Carter in good time reacted with a series of measures specifically exert pressure on the Soviets to withdraw. These measures included a threat of a grain embargo, withdrawal of the SALT II agreement from Senate consideration and a possible boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) was two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the US and the Soviet Union. The Cold War superpowers had dealt with arms control in two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II to gain mutual benefit.
So, in 1980, Great Britain and Australia, the strongest allies of the US, joined the initiator in calling for the Olympics boycott although in the end both countries ended up sending athletes to the games.
To build support for the boycott in Africa, Carter sent American boxer Mohammad Ali on a goodwill tour to persuade African Governments to extend support for boycott. But Ali was not taken seriously; he was on the contrary dismissed as nobody in the matter. In the end, the closest US allies to join the movement against the Moscow games were Canada, West Germany and Israel.
Most of the Islamic nations also joined the boycott except Afghanistan which sent eleven athletes to compete. Other nations refusing to send teams to Moscow included Chile, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, South Korea and the People's Republic of China.
Technically, in the US, the decision of whether or not to send athletes to the Olympic Games does not actually rest with either the President or the Congress. It is the US Olympic Committee (USOC) that takes the final decision, which fortunately for Carter expressed its willingness to respect the decision of the US Government.
In actuality, the Soviet-Afghan war did not end until 1989 and the Soviets reacted to the boycott by retaliating and leading a communist-bloc boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. These Olympic boycotts were just one manifestation of the cooling relations between the US and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.
So, it’s not 41 but 57 years later that India restored the hockey glory. It’s factually Tokyo gold in 1964 to Tokyo bronze in 2021, which is a rare coincidence. When hockey was the craze until the 1080s, cricket was only a radio game.
Most people in India would tune in to hissy commentaries as poor radio signals would have it to know the scores of the boring, slow, mostly-indecisive test matches played by 13 individuals in white.
Hockey which made people lose sleep slowly lost out to cricket. But later, particularly after the limited-overs World Cup began, cricket gained ground for three big reasons: matches ended up with victory-defeat outcomes and live telecasting. Further, cricket rules became tight; 50 overs took less time; and, above all, money came pouring in from corporate houses. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and later Bangladesh alone ensured most revenue merely because of the astounding number of crazy viewers.
Thus, cricket in India became the monarch of all games. Hockey was killed, so were football volleyball and many other ethnic traditional games.
Around the close of the second decade of the new millennium, Odisha, with a solid political party entrenched since close of the last century, took up the challenge of hosting the Asian Athletics meet after Jharkhand failed to do so after accepting the task years earlier.
Odisha, to save the face of India, agreed to take up challenge, Within 90-odd days, it proved global sports events could happen grandly if only there was a will. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik was frantic to restore the lost glory of hockey which he played as goalkeeper during college days. Everyone knows how magnificently the 2018 Hockey World Cup happened in Bhubaneswar.
Odisha did not look back once ever since. The Government kind of adopted the game and allotted good money to train both national men and women teams and all budding players.
It has an annual grant of 1,500 million rupees kept aside for hockey. So, hockey lost to cricket for half a century, is now back with vengeance. Indians experienced the glamour and glitter of Bhubaneswar hockey.
Cricket, though not dead and gone, has lost to hockey in a way. Big credit goes to the Odisha Government.
Now, hockey is the de facto national game of India though officially the nation does not have a game of such nature. As the evil Taliban forces are busy seizing Afghanistan by terror, Odisha Government officials are merrily engaged in felicitating hockey heroes in Bhubaneswar.