Some things still haven't changed at the Jaipur Polo Ground, Delhi, the nerve centre of Polo in India. Just as a polo match begins, a stray dog enters from the neighbouring golf course, takes offense at the horses, and decides to give them a chase. There are peals of laughter from the spectators and the brave dog abandons its pursuits, let the horses be, and excuses itself from the field! Likewise, the kites still swoop down on the rolling polo ball mistaking it for a freshly-laid horse egg!

But make no mistakes. These all too familiar scenes at the polo ground hide a fascinating and ever changing story of the royal sport. Few other sports have changed and evolved at such a rapid pace as polo. The stands at the Jaipur polo ground, the Mecca of Indian Polo, have never been so full. The row of limousines in the parking lot look straight from an automobile show and the spectators, a virtual who's who of India's social circuit. An increasing number of generous patrons are stepping forward to sponsor prestigious tournaments. Yes, Polo in India has gained a patina of prosperity. But there is more to the story of Indian Polo than meets the eye! Ten years ago, the most optimistic of the polo enthusiasts were despondent about the future of the sport. The decline of Indian polo started in 1970 when Sawai Man Singh , the maharaja of Jaipur died while playing polo in England. By the mid-eighties, the game had reached its nadir. The senior players had been around for almost two decades and next generation of army polo players had not gained the stature. One thing was very clear at this point that polo could not grow any further without a fresh infusion of horses and money from outside.
The turning point came in 1987 with the arrival on the scene of Arvind Singh Mewar of Udaipur who gave a stable full of horses to a youngster, Lokender Singh and asked him to play on. KV Singh from Jodhpur joined the Mewar camp and the two youngsters, with the help of their patron changed the course of Indian polo for all times to come. In the next few years the Mewar team revamped the field, winning the Indian Polo Championship for three consecutive years. The army's monopoly had broken for good.                        While Arvind Singh Mewar brought new horses and players, sponsorship was brought in by Jim Edward of Tiger Tops Mountain Travels. Known in the polo world as Jim Tiger, he sponsored the Tiger Mountain Polo tournament from 1987 and was instrumental in bringing the first international sponsors to the game - the J&B of England. The J&B Baroda Cup remains an important landmark in Delhi's polo season and the J&B Polo Ball, a much sought after social event. Today, backed by a host of sponsors, the mallets are swinging merrily once more. The organisers at major centres have a choice of sponsors.While the sponsors get publicity, the game gallops along with funds injected in.
The army of civilian players is growing at a heady pace. Ten years ago, there were perhaps ten to fifteen Polo ponies outside the army stables, today, there are almost 200 horses with the civilian players in Delhi alone. The scene is equally vibrant in other polo centres like Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Jaipur and Jodhpur. This does not mean the royalty has vanished from the scene. Yuvraj Vikramaditya Singh of Kashmir has his own team and the Udaipur and Jodhpur families also have their Polo stables.

Rise of the Indian Army
The emergence of Indian army began in mid fifties. A tradition which went back to the days of Lt. Joe Shearer and Winston Churchill who played for the 4^th Hussars. He describes in My Early Life, of how much of the life of a cavalry officer serving in India was taken up by the game " We built a large tiled barn with mud walls containing stables for thirty horses. Our three butlers formed a triumvirate in which no internal dissension ever appeared, we paid an equal contribution into the pot and thus freed from the mundane cares, devoted ourselves to the serious purpose of life.This was expressed in one word - Polo."

The army teams could never rival the might of the Maharajas who maintained even larger strings of ponies. However, by late fifties, age was catching up with the Maharajas and the royal treasuries were getting depleted. Some young army officers who had developed under the patronage of Major General Habibullah, Commandant of the National Defence Academy and one of the greatest well-wisher of the game, were making their presence felt on the polo fields. It was in 1961 that an army team comprising of three young ex-NDA officers - Billy Sodhi, VP Singh, Pradeep Mehra and Maj. Thakur Kishan Singh, won the IPA championship for the first time. Polo ushered into what we might call its military age. The only royal family that remained interested in the game during these years was that of Jaipur.

For the next two and a half decades, the game was dominated by a string of army players lead by Colonel Billy Sodhi and his juniors who had followed the route of Lawrence School Sanawar and the National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla. Brigadier VP Singh, the highest handicap player in post independent India ,came up during this period. The other notable players were Farroque Bijly, Raj Kalhan, Pickles Sodhi, Rupi Brar, Kuldeep Garcha, Bheem Suhag, Kaka Sandhu and Prem Sirohi - all from the Indian army. Kaka Sandhu and Bheem Suhag, now Major Generals in the Indian army, can still be seen on the field teaching the youngsters a lesson or two!

The army, which had dominated the field for almost three decades, no longer holds the sway. But it is the army which has sustained the game throughout its ups and downs. When the prestigious President's Estate Polo Club was dismantled last year, it was the army which came to the rescue and gave a new lease of life to Indian polo by accommodating this nerve centre at the Nicholson Range. The army still remains the backbone of Indian polo in terms of providing the logistical support for the sustenance of the game.

THE CORPORATISATION OF INDIAN POLO
The industrialists' contribution to polo has been no less. Biky Oberoi heads the list, his company has sponsored polo since the time when such a concept did not even exist. The others include Ajay Piramal, who has been a keen polo player and now runs his own team in association with the Oberois. He is the moving force behind the tremendous progress the game has made in Bombay. Polo in Madras and Calcutta has been going down with the emergence of Jaipur as a major centre, the reason being that the players are reluctant to cart their horses all the way to these remote centres where the local player population has not really picked up in the recent years.

J & B, the scotch major, used to be one of the major sponsors of the sport and the J & B Baroda Cup one of the most awaited tournaments of the Delhi season. J &B have since moved out of the Polo scene but Chivas has quickly filled in the vacuum. Hindustan Times, a major national news paper has taken to Polo in a big way and has been instrumental in popularising the sport in the recent years. Shobhana Bharatia, the elegant proprietor of the company has emerged as the leading proponent of the sport.

At the capital, two of the leading patrons are Navin Jindal, a leading industrialist with a stable of over 50 polo ponies and Karan Thapar of Crompton Greaves who also runs a team. These patrons are regular players and participate in all high goal tournaments. Navin is also responsible for bringing up the polo facility at Noida. With a polo field coming up and stables in the neighbourhood, this could be an alternate place for the polo aficionados at the capital. 

Keen interest shown by the industry is sure to take Indian polo to the great heights it had attained before India became independent.