Jerseygate? No answers on how Indian hockey teams’ shirts went saffron

Four years back, India let go a golden opportunity to wrest back the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup at home – finishing a disappointing joint ninth. As another edition is round the corner from 15-30 August in Belgium and Netherlands, the talk should have centred around how Harmanpreet Singh & Co can translate their back-to-back Olympic bronze medals or the 2023 Asian Games success to the next level.

Instead, we are left discussing the row brewing over the Hockey India’s sudden decision to change the national team’s traditional blue jersey to saffron. A decision, which saw Dilip Tirkey, the Hockey India president and a man with record number of international caps doing a double speak on – first telling the media that players were consulted on this before leaked email alleged the decision was taken without the nod of the executive board.

Here’s what Ajit Pal Singh, captain of the fabled 1975 World Cup winning Indian team, had to say in a signed column in Indian Express: ‘’When India first played hockey in the Olympics in 1928, the players wore blue jerseys. When the country won its first Olympic medal after Independence, they wore blue. When the team I captained lifted the World Cup in 1975 — the first and only time India won that title — we wore blue.

‘’In a couple of weeks, 51 years after that World Cup triumph, India will begin another World Cup campaign in the Netherlands. This time, however, the players will wear an orange jersey. To me, that is both surprising and disappointing and it shouldn’t have happened.’’

Now, the hero of Indian hockey’s glory days has no compulsions to be politically correct but the stakes for Harmanpreet and his men are different. Caught in the crossfire between public outrage and a not-so-subtle act of saffronisation of one of the biggest sporting brands after the cricket teams, each of them parroted the same lines that the bright orange will help them identify their teammates better rather than blue – which is now the standardised colour of the Astro turf.

The words of anguish from Naveen Patnaik, former Odisha Chief Minister and the person solely responsible for providing hockey the comfort zone of a team sponsorship when there were no takers, are particularly significant.  “The iconic shade of blue of the Indian hockey team is not just a colour but an emotion associated with the nation’s sporting heritage,” he said in a X post with multiple photos of men and women’s teams lined up in blue.

While the change of jersey colours is not going to impact the strength of the national team, the political overtones associated behind this move is not unique – and hence obvious. There have been not-so-subtle attempts to lend a liberal dose of saffron in the shirts of the national cricket teams with the orange colour having come to stay as the secondary colour scheme along with the trademark blue colours.

Going by Tirkey’s email, copies of which have now been accessed by more than one mainstream media house, then the burning question is: who had been responsible for executing such a major change? Were the players actually consulted about this? There is a growing school of thought that it’s time to talk up about the team’s chances rather than the colour of the shirts – but then the damage has been done ever since the men and women’s teams posed in a shocking orange earlier this week.

Those in the know of things insinuate that the development could be the result of a deeper malaise inside the Hockey India, where Tirkey is being increasingly isolated by Secretary General Bholanath Singh.  A Padmashree awardee, the former Olympian was installed unopposed in 2022 with Bholanath, selected as his secretary, had been a more dyed-in-the-wool sports official by being president of Hockey Jharkhand who had been a vice president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) under the tainted Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

The Hockey India has been of late rocked by a complaint filed by Asunta Lakra, a former women’s team captain and member of its executive board, against Bholanath backing former coach Sudhir Golla – accused of sexual harassment and intimidation of women players of Jharkhand. Tirkey has, as per instructions of the Union Sports Ministry, written to Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to conduct an ‘impartial’ inquiry.

There are pertinent questions being asked in the media if the Jerseygate is being used as a diversionary tactic from a bigger scandal at hand? We will possibly never know.