Pritam: “This is the best Games Village I ever had in my career”

Pritam Siwach is no stranger to hockey. Having played in three Asian Games and twice in the Commonwealth Games (1998 and 2002), no Indian women player is so entitled to pass a judgement on anything on hockey as she does.

Here comes the hockey queen’s take on Delhi Commonwealth Games Village, which has been wrongly on the limelight.

“Please take it from me, this is the best village I had ever happened to check in. It is many many notches better than all Asian Games I played in, and far far better than Malaysia and Manchester (Commonwealth Games)”.

Pritam is one of the coaches of the Indian women team which incidentally faced lot of negative media coverage, burying the truth.

Speaking exclusively to stick2hockey.com she outlined why it is best, or was it because of sheer patriotism?

“This is the first village in which we have been given television”, she beamed.

At the same time she felt bad on what she happened to see on the screen. “TV people are not telling the real things. Everything is fine here. Any time we have buses waiting for us to carry the places we were supposed to go. I know at Manchester, we had to wait for long time to get our turn for the shuttle”.

“The food is excellent, lot of variety, the atmosphere is terrific. Lot of people have already checked in, we have already got an atmosphere”.

“We went twice to stadium from here, and it did not take much time. I am from Delhi I know the traffic here, still we reached quicker than normal times”.

She Commonwealth Games Gold medalist also has a grouse. “Too much security”.

“Everywhere lot of police, checking us many times, it is too much”.

Pritam is this site’s columnist for the 2002 Asian Games

One thing of course that makes her happy in the village is minute details and lot of people to fall upon, to assist.

“In my room for a while the television did not work, just a call away two mechanics turned up. Within a minute the set was aptly set up”.

Coming back to media coverage on the games village, she had to say this in her inimitable style.

I actually castigated a few journalists here. I asked them why they do like this. Apna ghar mein isa chhota mota cheeze hota nahi kya”.

This is the first on the sport report from actual sources.