Gill blames Indian team for bus goof-up: Sources

Biswajyoti Brahma, TNN 25 July 2009,

NEW DELHI: The controversy regarding the Indian hockey team missing its Pune-Delhi flight on Thursday got a new twist on Friday. According to TOI sources, just a day after the hockey players were left stranded at the Pune airport following a bus goof-up, sports minister MS Gill said at a meeting with Sports Authority of India (SAI) officials that the buses had in fact arrived in time to pick the team.

At the meeting, when a member raised this issue and pointed out that the team had insisted that SAI was at fault, the minister said he was told by a senior SAI official that the buses had reached the team hotel in time.

“I’ve been told that the players and support staff boarded the buses and they were heading for the airport when some members realised that they have left their luggage behind. So all of them returned to collect them. That’s why they reached the airport late,” Gill was quoted as saying by a source in the sports ministry.

This comment is in complete contrast to the one made by the players and coaches Jose Brasa and Harendra Singh who had maintained that the buses came late which resulted in the team missing the Kingfisher flight, leaving them stranded for six hours. So, who is lying here?

Interestingly, Hockey India, whose president AK Mattoo had expressed dismay over the episode on Thursday, tried to play it down on Friday. “The episode is behind us. We have nothing more to say on the issue,” Hockey India secretary Mohammad Aslam Khan told TOI. Mattoo had said that he would take up the matter with top SAI officials.