A week after the Rourkela campers have been informed openly of the team composition, the so-called selectors stunned the hockey world on Friday by making a change, just a day before the team left for the Doha Asian Games.

Viren Rasquinha’s name figures in the official website of the Asian Games, but he won’t be going there. After a farce trail – farce because a selection trail had already been held at Rourkela after which only the team list was sent to the Organizers of the Asian Games – held on Friday at Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, Viren has been dropped. Young Gurbaj Singh of Air-India (Till last season he played for the Indian Airlines) has come in his place.

A new face coming into the team should always be welcomed, but timing and occasion should be ideal for that. Here in this part of world Asian Games is second only to Olympics, as its hockey event is 50 years old and has its own fairy tales, feats and a specific history. Even World Cup hockey and Champions Trophy tournaments come next only to Asian Games in terms of popularity in the Indian psyche.

Therefore, Asian Games is not a place to experiment. Strictly speaking any newcomer should be tried only at the invitational tournaments and test matches not at the major events, known as target tournaments in the High Performance Coaching lexicon. This has been the guiding principle of ‘glorious’ India of 50s and 60s.

Never buy the innumerable explanations the selectors and the IHF officials are not tired of dishing out to media. They are not even worth the paper on which they are printed. Their explanations lack credibility, consistency and logic.

The fact of the matter is,

One, Viren has been dropped against the will of the chief coach V. Baskaran. (We will discuss whole gamut of issues related to this, including Baskaran’s silent acceptance of this humiliation, soon in other story).

Two, the decision is a result of cheap, manipulative politics, the fulcrum of which is ugly face of regionalism.

Simply put it, look at the composition of so-called Selection Committee. It speaks for itself. Gurbux Singh, Surinder Singh Sodhi, Ajit Pal Singh, Harmik Singh. This Committee’s chairman is KPS Gill and Secretary is Jothi Kumaran. If you leave the last named (he has already taken care of his quota), rest all come from a particular region, irrespective of where they live now.

What is surprise therefore in them selecting a player from their region at the cost of experienced player from another region? They seem to be so parochial that all other niceties, tradition and like the team list had already been sent to the Orgnizers, were given a go by.

Now what will happen?

Chief coach will not play Gurbaj at all in the Asian Games. When Devesh Chauhan was thrust on him for the Sydney Olympics, he saw to it he is never given a chance to enter the field in the whole of Olympics there. Rajinder negated all the boys he had to take on his team due to Jothi Kumanran’s tantrums. Gurbaj will warm up the bench, all the while the team will miss a genuine all rounder. Viren was under-utilized at Monchengladbach. He certainly played his part well whenever he was asked to play. He proved his worth as a midfielder and defender and at times a forward prompting pivot. His performance has been consistently good against South Korea and Pakistan, our main rivals at Doha, especially the former who counts on counter attacks for goals.