National Women’s Team Bundled Like ‘Cattle’

Mumbai: Nothing seems to have changed for women’s hockey in India.

If at the start of the year, the national team, returning from a training-cum-competition camp in Australia, was dumped into a shabby dormitory—14 to a room—at the Karnail Singh Stadium in New Delhi, the situation is no better at the camp in Bangalore.

The number of players per room has come down but the treatment is just as bad. They are now stacked nine to a room with conditions so bad that some players have fallen ill. The players, housed at Sai’s Kenkeri complex in Bangalore, have another month to go before their ordeal ends.

All this when a new hostel, meant for hockey players, lies unoccupied, awaiting a chief guest for inauguration.

The girls are forced to live under such circumstances because the Beijing-bound athletes, who are also training at the Kenkeri, have been allotted more rooms than the hockey players.

“But what about us?’’ asked a player. “Are we expected to live like cattle?’’

The players, some of whom spoke to the TOI on condition of anonymity, were at their wits’ end trying to cope with the conditions at the camp. “We are undergoing a fitness camp but how do you expect us to ever recover from our daily training when we do not get proper rest,’’ said a player.

Another one reveals how filthy the toilets are and how they are struggling to cope with it.

“The rest of the facilities are okay, the food is good and bed linen and other things are better than what we got at the Karnail Singh Stadium. But because we get very little rest, some have fallen ill,’’ said a player.

With coach MK Kaushik yet to reach Bangalore, the girls are only undergoing a fitness camp.

Vidya Stokes, the president of the Indian woman’s Hock ey Federation, was not even aware that the girls were forced to live in such conditions. “I was not aware (that nine players are staying in a room). Please call me tomorrow morning,’’ was all Stokes had to say.