Strong discrimination between hockey and cricket: Sandeep
Staff Reporter | Bhopal
Discrimination between cricket and hockey is not uncommon in India but the fact that national hockey team skipper Sandeep Singh’s hapless family once shelled out about Rs 15 lakh for his medical treatment makes that contrast exceedingly stark.
‘’On August 22, 2006, I was travelling by the Shatabdi Express — along with another player Rajpal Singh — to Delhi as the national team was to leave for Germany for the World Cup,’’ Singh, who recently led the team to the Azlan Shah Cup victory, told mediapersons here on Saturday.
A Railway Protection Force constable, seated next to him, accidentally fired his service weapon. With the bullet lodged in his back, Singh was placed on a bench in Haryana’s Kurukshetra Station.
When an ambulance did not arrive even after a seemingly interminable ten minutes, Singh was rushed to hospital in an auto-rickshaw but the doctors said that he would have to be taken to the Post-Graduate Institute (PGI), Chandigarh.
‘’The ambulance arrived to take me to PGI but the driver claimed he was low on fuel. One of my friends gave the cash,’’ said Singh who is sweating blood along with his teammates at a camp in the Sports Authority of India Centre here ahead of the Asia Cup.
He has emerged from the shock of that incident but some memories still haunt him. After sustaining the gunshot wound at age 22, he had thought his days on the turf were over. ‘’I credit my well-wishers and God for my return to the game,’’ Singh said.
Another member of the national team said, ‘’we are used to such apathy now. The scenario portrayed in the recent film Chak de India is not very far from the truth.’’