St Thomas Mount’s tryst with hockey is alive and well

Despite being the youngest player in the camp, Adesh likes to talk about the complexities of the game: “Dribbling, tapping and goal scoring require a lot of skill,” he says, but Nikhil simply states, “I love playing hockey.” Also a part of the camp is Bradley, great grandson of legendary hockey player Charlie Huggins, a goalkeeper, who represented the Railways in the 1960s and gave Indian women’s hockey an outstanding centre forward in his sister Phyllis. For this youngster, hockey was a family obsession, passed down from one generation to another, and it is clear that he loves the game too. “Hockey is my great grandfather’s game. After him, it was my father, who started playing it. Nobody else in the family took up the sport. My father then passed it on to us.”

In an age of cricket, football and extravagant sporting leagues, the Mount Stars Sport Club continues its threedecade long tradition of keeping the sporting history of St Thomas Mount alive.Not many know that the humble Mount Stars Sport Club has produced over 80 hockey players. Dass Krishnan, Secretary of Mount Stars Sport Club said that the camp had produced many state and national-level players. “St Thomas Mount has always been known for producing quality hockey players. V.J. Peter and his brother Philips were Olympians and represented the national team on a global level. Kathiresan is an internationally renowned hockey player. Apart from these icons, many players have emerged from St Thomas Mount, who have played for the Railways, Indian Bank, Port Trust and other organisations. We have produced many such players, including Naveen Kumar Prashad, a junior goalkeeper for the Indian team, and Sounder, who represented the state,” said the former hockey player. 

Tracing the history of hockey’s golden period at St. Thomas Mount, Richard O’Connor, a chronicler, said that the sport had lost its sheen in the last few years. A resident of St. Thomas Mount for the past 30 years, O’Connor reminisced, “Mount’s hockey tradition goes back a long way. Back in the day, it was a hub for the game, played by the Europeans living in this locality. Charles Huggins was a goalkeeper from here, who played for India in the 1970s” Also from St Thomas Mount were Neville Richtor of Loyola, a fullback who captained Madras in the 1940s/1950s and played for India was a frontrunner for the 1948 Olympic team) and Leslie Cotter, who was India’s centre half at the Asian Games in Tokyo. 

The sport had a glorious run from the 1960s up to the ‘80s, after which it slowly lost to cricket. Hockey was played at the school level back then, but soon, that stopped, leading to the dwindling popularity of the sport. Schools must start patronising hockey as much as they support cricket, to revive this national sport,” adds O’Conner. 

D. Telles, a coach at the camp, pointed regretfully to the fact that most playgrounds had now been converted into parks. “We have been fighting hard with the Cantonment Office to use their park as a playground for hockey, where we can encourage children to play the game. We have all the talent here and many former players have been impressed by the skills of our young players,” he said, proudly. 

O’Connor concluded, “India is known for hockey just as Brazil is known for football. But sadly, we have let the sport suffer. We need a grassroots-focused effort to revive this national sport to its former glory.”

While the representation of women in hockey is abysmal, O’Connor revealed that this wasn’t always the case. “Back in the 1970s, many women too played the game. Charles’ sister, Phyllis Huggins, played for India and so did Pamela Hayward. There were many hockey clubs for women, the most prominent of them being the Shamrocks Club, which had many players from St. Thomas Mount,” he recalled. 

Speaking about the lack of women in the sport, Dass added, “Many parents are hesitant to send their girls to play hockey because of the fear of injuries. However, we have had quite a few girls in our camp.”