Hockey players ‘demand’ money to play charity match

Mumbai: The Indian hockey team finds itself in the middle of another controversy after organisers of a charity function accused the players of demanding Rs5 crore to play in an exhibition game in Chandigarh on Saturday.

Hardeep Sandhu, a member of the organising committee of the AMR foundation, on Saturday, claimed that the players, led by Prabhjot Singh, Rajpal Singh and Deepak Thakur, demanded Rs5 crore to play in the four charity matches of 15 minutes each featuring Bollywood and TV stars.

The players, however, refuted the claims and alleged that the organisers did not arrange air tickets from New Delhi to Chandigarh for all the players. “Why would we ask for money? We were invited for a match and we happily accepted the invitation. I don’t know why they are accusing us of such things,” skipper Rajpal Singh said. “We will demand an apology from them. This is not done. We refused to play because a few of our teammates were not given air tickets,” added Rajpal.

The players, who had a day off from their World Cup training, were suppose to play four 15-minute matches against celebrities.

“We had roped in 22 players to feature in the matches with Bollywood and TV stars but we handed them the flight tickets yesterday (Friday), a group of players told us they don’t want these tickets as they are not gaining anything,” Sandhu said. “Players said they were expecting Rs4 to 5 crore from sponsorship. Now that not many sponsors are coming, they refused to play. The organisers are very upset as despite written agreement they are backing out,” added the former national player.

AMR Foundation spokesman Ansul Nagar said that there was no particular deal and they had just planned to give the sponsorship money from the charity match to the players. While Hockey India officials kept themselves away from this controversy, questions are raised over the timing of this exhibition match, considering that only one week remains for the World Cup to begin.