The dream died quickly, with reasons ranging from selection politics to players losing motivation to go on. The drag-flicker’s jinx hurts more than Indian cricket’s dearth of pace bowlers did not too long ago. Hockey seems to have tried it all. And yet lost.

No quick-fix

It was only a year ago that Indian cricket was facing its sternest and prickliest posers after exiting the World Cup. There was redemption within six months in the form of Twenty20.

Unfortunately for the stick-men, there’s no quickie-hockey to salvage their sport’s own melancholic March.

When India’s Olympic contingent walks the opening ceremony on 8/8/08, it will have shrunk dramatically from Athens — hockey’s 16 missing from the celebratory march-past. Only 23 Indians have qualified otherwise — there were 76 four years ago. And from the quibbling that has been going on in another key discipline — tennis — India’s non-cricket sports seem to be on the path to self-destruct.

Hockey has let go off its only opportunity in four years to grab the eye-balls. And sadly, Indian sports’ most impressionable minds — those under-25, born after 1980 — will have grown up not knowing what an Olympic gold medal is at all. That’s a generation of admirers lost.

The street-wise clincher: SRK’s IPL cricket team is a fact, his Chak De seems mere pop fiction now. Don’t blame the Wankede for nudging out the BHA.