Two months ago we saw Auction of cricket players under the glare of media for the Indian Premier League (Cricket).
Now it seems the turn of hockey, but not of auctioning the players variety but of the players auctioning some of their proud possession in order to save their collegue’s hockey tournament.
Three Indian hockey stars are putting out their proud possessions for aucttion tomorrwo to garner money for running a hockey tournament.
The first ever auction by hockey players will take place tomorrow at Chandiagarh, and the players doing the fancy thing will be Deepak Thakur, Prabhjot Singh and Rajpal Singh.
The trio were frustrated as they could not find a sponsors for a six-a-side tournament their collegue Sukhbir Singh GIll has been organizing in Chandigarh since six years.
So, the threesome, who are still in the national team recokoning, will auction their jerseys tomorrow to raise money and create awareness about the lack of support for hockey in the country.
While Rajpal and Prabhjot will be auctioning T-shirts worn by them in the final of the Asia Cup last year, when India defeated Korea 7-2, Thakur will be selling a T-shirt worn by him during India’s 7-4 victory over Pakistan in the 2004 Champions Trophy in Lahore.
The tournament sees participation from top domestic teams such as BPCL, Punjab & Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank, CISF and Rock Rovers Club.
The players neither have any great expectations from the auction nor are they targetting any amount. “You have expectations when you’ve done something before and you know what can happen. We are doing this for the first time, so there are no set targets. Let’s see what happens, we can only try,” Rajpal said one of the newspapers.
At least two television channels are going from New Delhi to shoot the action live