BANGALORE: India dreams of hosting the Olympics Games. It is chuffed about the forthcoming Commonwealth Games. But if in Bangalore – a city spoken of in the same breath as Boston and Buffalo – its University hockey team leaves for all-India championships without the most rudimentary of items, shoes, what does it say about the state of non-cricket sports in India?

It isn’t as if the matter of missing shoes for Bangalore University’s south zone championship winning team was not publicly known. The team’s captain, SM Rafique, had made a plaintive plea for it at a felicitation programme nearly two months ago. A chastened vice-chancellor, N Prabhu Dev, had then jumped to his feet to promise the team shoes after famously quipping, “Thank god you didn’t ask for the hockey sticks.” Thank god, indeed.

Despite all the drama, red tape means the team boarded the train on Tuesday evening for Sambalpur to compete in the inter-university championships without the shoes. In true Indian tradition, nobody is willing to own up for the mess. The officials are passing the buck with a lot more niftiness than the boys would have actually managed with the ball on the pitch.

At the railway station on Tuesday, crestfallen faces and the realisation that the shoes are out of the question quickly made way for youthful exuberance and boisterous chatter as the team embarked on a journey to win the national crown. After all, unlike the red-tape smothered officialdom, the boys have a job to do.

Prabhu Dev was livid when told that the boys had left without the shoes. He said, “I approved the proposal of Rs 80,000 ten days ago. It was then moved to the director of physical education. There were some issues between the finance officer and the physical education director.”

Now he has a hopelessly unworkable solution: “I have instructed the team manager to make the purchases in Sambalpur and hand over the purchase bill to me.”