Once-dominant India misses Olympics

Prabodh Tirkey of India after losing against Britain on Sunday.(Victor Ruiz Caballero/Reuters)

India, the eight-time Olympic field-hockey champion, plunged to a new low by failing to qualify for this year's Beijing Games, snapping an 80-year run that began with six straight gold medals after a startling debut at Amsterdam in 1928.

India's hopes of figuring in the 12-team Olympic lineup were dashed Sunday when it lost 2-0 to Britain in the final of a qualifying competition in Santiago. Chile, on Sunday, provoking criticism Monday from former Indian players at the way the sport is run.

Barry Middleton and Richard Mantell scored for Britain, also a former Olympic champion, in the first 10 minutes.

Ashok Kumar, a former captain and member of the 1975 World Cup winning squad, called India's failure to qualify for Beijing a "huge national disaster."

"This decline did not happen in one day, the hockey federation just did not seem interested in noticing and arresting the decline," Kumar said

India has slumped in the world rankings since winning the 1975 World Cup and the last of its eight Olympic gold medals at the boycott-marred Moscow Games in 1980.

Indian teams have shown glimpses of its once dazzling stick-work, but it has not reached for the semifinals in the last eight World Cups and the last six Olympic Games.

Pargat Singh, who captained India at two Olympics, said India' had few players of international quality and "the pool is further dwindling with the game not being promoted at the grass roots."

"Indian hockey needs a rebuilding program, but the hockey federation is acting deaf and dumb and doesn't seem bothered about bringing any change," he said.

India was required to compete in one of the three qualifiers - from which one team each will feature at the Olympics - after finishing fourth at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar. It was the first time India had failed to win a medal at the tournament.

Media reports said coach Joaquim Carvalho had quit after his team lost Sunday, but the hockey federation refused to comment on the resignation.

Indian Hockey Federation's chief, K.P.S. Gill, acknowledged that the failure to qualify was a big setback but was reported to have brushed aside demands for his resignation.

"We do not have an instant coffee machine that you can get results instantly," Gill was quoted as saying by Press Trust of India.

"We've put the process in place and the results will take some time. It is not proper to respond at this stage. We'll wait for the team to return first, then we will have a clear idea what went wrong."