England hockey team heads to Delhi for Commonwealth Games

LONDON: England men’s hockey captain said he was itching to get to the Commonwealth Games despite all the problems on the ground as the country’s first group of athletes prepared to fly to Delhi.

“We are just looking to get into Delhi, and start playing hockey a bit and get the preparations going,” Barry Middleton, whose team are the second ranked team in the tournament, told BBC radio.

“We are used to being out on the road and in hotels and wherever and we’ll settle in wherever we are pretty easily,” he added. “We want to adapt to Delhi a bit and get playing hockey.”

The hockey and bowls teams were due to fly out on Thursday evening, although a team spokesman said they were likely to be taken to a ‘holding camp’ on arrival rather than the athletes’ village.

“It might be a hotel for 24 or 48 hours,” he said. India is scrambling against the clock to save the Games, which are due to open on Oct. 3, after champion athletes quit the showcase event and nations threatened to stay home unless authorities cleaned a village deemed “unfit for human habitation”.

The BBC published photographs of animal footprints on beds and grimy, soiled bathrooms inside the village but Middleton laughed that off: “It looks like my house a bit,” he joked. “I’m not too worried.

“These are things for the performance director who is out there and he’s on top of things like this. They are going to sort all that out and we are just going to get in the hotel and hopefully get some sleep early on.”

England is sending 551 athletes to Delhi, although the next batch are not due to travel until the weekend.

Middleton said the sporting facilities themselves were excellent.

“We were there in March for the World Cup and we’ve seen the stadium,” he said. “The stadium’s brilliant for hockey, one of the best we’ve played in, so we’re looking forward to getting there and doing that.”