NEW DELHI: India’s hockey bosses have fired chief national selector Aslam Sher Khan, three months after giving him the task of reviving the country’s national sport.
“We have appointed former Indian captain Ajitpal Singh as chairman of the selection panel,” Suresh Kalmadi, president of the Indian Olympic Association, said on Thursday.
The IOA has been in charge of the sport since April after the men’s national field hockey body faced accusations of bribery against a key official.
Kalmadi said Singh was the unanimous choice at a meeting of the ruling five-member panel.
Singh was a member of the selection penal headed by Khan, while Khan was a member of India’s 1975 World Cup winning team that was captained by Singh.
Former Indian captains Ashok Kumar, Zafar Iqbal and Dhanraj Pillay are the other national selectors.
Khan’s removal comes three weeks after leading Australian coach Ric Charlesworth quit his job as the squad’s technical director, saying the officials never specified the tasks he was supposed to perform.
Charlesworth, a former Australia captain, came to India last year as part of the “Promoting Indian Hockey” project.
India won six successive gold medals in the Olympic Games between 1928 and ’56 but has witnessed a sharp slump in recent decades, failing to qualify for the semifinals of six consecutive Olympics since 1984.
The eight-time Olympic field hockey champion India does not even feature in the lineup for this year’s Olympic competition in Beijing