One match and two Man of the Match

Sanasam Yaiphaba Singh *

It was the time when Olympic aspirant countries were fully engaged in the Hockey practice in 1987. Indian team also was fully preparing to display outstanding performance in the Olympic Games 1988. At such a crucial time Indian team was invited to the BMW World Hockey Tournament being held at Amstelveen, Netherlands.

The tournament was exclusively organised for four top countries which were selected after a critical assessment of the performance of the teams which were expected to win potentially in Olympic Games. The teams were West Germany, Netherlands, Great Britain and India. Kshetrimayum Thoiba was a key member of the Indian team.

The above four teams were invited to participate in the tournament to witness the display of the world's superb hockey performance. All the four teams were strong, superb and well trained under expert coaches. Three of the participant teams were from European countries. Their forwards were versatile; they had penalty corner specialists; their styles of play were defence oriented and they adopted sudden changes of positions with football style tactics.

The players were of high degree of technical and psychological maturities besides physical fitness in speed and stamina. Therefore, competitively their players were recognised as super power players. Every match was played equally as if it was the final match because every team was very strong and recognised as world champions.

The match between India and Germany turned out to be one of the memorable events. The tactic of Germany was man-toman marking in defence particularly when they identified dangerous players of the opponent teams. In the match one or two German players were always behind Thoiba from the beginning of the game. A tall and robust player always looked at Thoiba instead of looking at the ball and playing the game.

He always tried to physically obstruct with body and stick, pulling the shirt and sometimes obstructing his physical movement etc. He was trying to disturb Thoiba mentally and physically that he had to complain to the umpire against the German player.

The umpire who was keeping an eye on the entire situation warned the German player, but still he continued to obstruct Thoiba not to get the ball and also disallow to play the normal game. The India coach MP Ganesh and the team captain MM Sommaiah observed and analysed that Germany might have applied the tactics of sacrificing one or two players to obstruct the player specially Thoiba who played a very fast and speedy game which would be dangerous against them.

At that time Thoiba was one of the fastest players known as the 'Speeder' of world hockey. It had come to his mind that it was the reason why the Germans had decided to mark him so he does not get the ball during the match. It was felt that it was not wise to respond in the same tactic because they were taller and stronger. He was determined to defeat their effort and strategy by his own method using his speed and fast game.

He adopted his own style of running fast with the ball so as to make Germany difficult to mark him. He remembered at the time that the European style of playing the game was different from those of Asian countries. He also knew the European style of marking of the man-to-man defence technique of playing, and he succeeded in breaking through their strategies.

India could take the advantage and score a goal. Netherlands and Great Britain also applied almost similar strategies. India was able to reach the final stage and had to play with Great Britain. The final match was very crucial because Great Britain had already become one of the strongest teams; and the team was the World Cup runners up at Willesden in 1986 and the country eventually became the Olympic Gold medallist in 1988 at Seoul.

Sean Kerly was considered as the fastest and speeder player of Great Britain. He was regarded as their 'executioner-in-chief' of goals mostly from fine passes of their left-wing, effervescent Imran Sherwani. At the beginning of the match, Great Britain played with splendid performance dominating the game and they led with 1-0. India also played with vigour and full speed.

As a result Thoiba was able to have a minus pass of the ball from his technique of 'speeder' that Jagbir Singh was able to convert the opportunity into a goal making scoreboard 1-1 draw. The two teams, India and Great Britain were declared joint winner of the tournament.

It was surprising that Thoiba of Indian team and Sean Kerly of Great Britain were also declared 'Man of the Match' of the tournament. Initially Thoiba did not understand how the Man of the Match was selected and what were the criteria of selection. Later on Indian team members along with the coach went to see the video recording of the match which was displayed on a wide screen.

From the analysis of the recording of the game, it was known that the criteria of selection of the Man of the match was not only the scoring of the goal but also more on the performance of the player who could break the man-to-man marking with their speed and skill which gave a new turn or change of the game.

Sean Kerly was also a player who could turn the game with his outstanding performance. It would be very interesting for Thoiba to play in such a tournament where his speed and performance was recognised worldwide. A lot of experience was also gained from such a high standard tournament.

Among the international tournaments he had participated, the BMW world Hockey Tournament was one of the most memorable events in his journey of Hockey. After a lapse of several years, it was in 2015 when Thoiba who was one of the selectors of Indian Hockey team was at the office of the Hockey India, Delhi to attend a meeting.

A tall and stout foreigner was found sitting in the office of Hockey India. The man could make an impression on Thoiba, but he could not recognise the man. The man also could not recognise Thoiba. Even after attending the meeting Thoiba saw the tall man still sitting in the office.

One of the staff members introduced the man to Thoiba as Sean Kerly, the Great Britain Olympian. The two Olympians introduced themselves with the years of the Olympic Games where they played for their respective countries. Both of them suddenly remembered their respective outstanding performances in the BMW World Hockey Tournament, Netherlands in 1987 wherein both of them were jointly declared as 'Man of the Match'.

'Man of the Match' was being regarded as the best player of the international tournament. The meeting of the two Olympians who were the 'two man of the match' after a gap of long years would surprisingly be a happy moment with a true sense of friendship through the spirit of sportsmanship among the international players.