Did Rajpal agree to step down?
Prabhjot Singh
Tribune News Service
Did Rajpal Singh of Chandigarh agree to step down as captain of World Cup team in favour of Prabhjot Singh so as forge unity in the team? Sources reveal that he did. Even if he had done so, there was no guarantee that Hockey India would endorse the recommendation of the team coach Jose Brasa and name Prabhjot Singh to lead the home team in the New Delhi World Cup.
At one stage, it was Rajpal Singh against rest of the team. This was the result of the second successive voting over captaincy issue conducted by Jose Brasa.
After the voting Rajpal Singh offered to step down. He even offered to accompany four senior members of the team – Prabhjot Singh, Deepak Thakur, Arjun Halappa and Andrian D’Souza – and coach Jose Brasa to the HI officials to support the change. He, however, had a three-point questionnaire for those who wanted to accompany him.
What in case, the HI agrees to his stepping down and names someone other than Prabhjot Singh as captain? Will the team agree to play under any other player named by the HI? What will be the stand of the players and the coach in case the HI did not accept his replacement by Prabhjot Singh as captain?
Since the coach and players had no convincing answer to any of these questions, they agreed to abide by the HI decision. Besides Prabhjot Singh, others who also thought themselves to be in the run for captaincy were Deepak Thakur – two times Olympian, and Arjun Halappa, as the most capped player in the team. Even Sandeep Singh, who was displaced after tour of Canada, too, would have been in the run in case of Rajpal Singh stepping down.
One major factor that went against Rajpal Singh was the impression among players that he was soft towards the HI over the money matters. Others insisted on a tough stand and use the World Cup as a lever to bargain hard. In fact, Jose Brasa had gone for open voting over captaincy issue not once but twice, one before even the name was not named.
And perhaps that was the provocation for the selection committee to overrule the recommendation of the team coach and insist on Rajpal Singh as captain. Selectors and HI remained on one side while coach Brasa and the rest of the team on the other. At one stage Rajpal had even agreed to be Prabhjot Singh’s deputy in the World Cup.
Failure to get the captain of their choice had the team divided and made players toughen their stand on financial demands, including their decision to ignore “no” from HI in signing agreements with the AMR Foundation for the February 20 match in the city here. It was a different issue that Indian players ultimately did not play the match.
Players favoured Prabhjot Singh not only for his seniority but also for the fact that he is the lone Indian player in the World XI nominated by the International Hockey Federation. Practically, if one looks at the team for the 2006 World Cup and the present team, there are only minor or cosmetic changes, as the nucleus of the team remains the same. In the 2006 World Cup, India had finished eleventh.