Money makes the world go round but the way it has dictated every move on the hockey pitch in India has made for a disconcerting picture. In many ways, it has undermined the sanctity of the game while goading the Indian player to chase the greenbacks rather than improve upon imperfections which remained our curse for decades. No doubt, money has dominated conversations and negotiations between players and the administration for many years now. But the last three years have seen intensive strategy sessions of two kinds: the first one obviously focused on the game and the other that spoke the trade union language. The well-chronicled players' strike of early 2010, its spillover in 2011 which had two players - Sandeep Singh and Sardar Singh - making their intentions clear, were all part of the undercurrent of unrest in the game. The matter was, in essence, simple: hockey was a deprived sport for no reason, a truth that became even harder to digest with the rise of cricket and IPL.