Hockey camp finally begins on Tuesday

The sports ministry has given the green signal, the camp will begin from Tuesday. (AFP Photo)
NEW DELHI/BANGALORE: Amidst allegations and counter-allegations, the sports ministry on Monday cleared the deck for the national hockey camp in Bangalore, which will now begin on Tuesday. The decision to give the green signal to the camp followed confusion over its schedule.

A day after Hockey India (HI) took a dig at the ministry for not giving the green signal for the camp, the ministry on Monday lashed out at the sports body, saying it had leaked selective information about the camp and concealed the crucial approval of the steering committee to get the training started on March 13.

Strongly refuting HI’s claim that it had delayed permission for the national camp scheduled at the Sports Authority of India (Bangalore) from Monday, the ministry said the committee meeting on February 6 and 10, chaired by secretary Sindhushree Khullar, had decided in tandem with a HI representative that the first camp post Olympic qualifiers would begin on March 13 at the same venue.

During the meeting, Khullar had pointed out that with the Olympics just five months away, “any deviation from or addition to the approvals given by the steering committee will now be allowed only in exceptional and very deserving cases after getting sufficient notice”.

Now that the ministry has given the green signal, the camp will begin from Tuesday. “The camp will start tomorrow in Bangalore and we will ask the probables to report in a day or two,” HI secretary Narinder Batra said after an hour-long meeting with ministry officials.

Batra did not specify what led to the confusion over the camp. “I don’t want to go into any detail apart from saying that the camp is starting from tomorrow,” he said. He also steered clear when asked whether action would be taken against players who were part of the World Series Hockey. About a dozen out of 48 probables named for the camp are playing for different teams in WSH. “I don’t know who all will be at the camp. Let the camp gets underway. Let us see who is attending the camp and who is not.”

Meanwhile, sources pointed out that neither was the ministry nor SAI given enough time to act on the fresh proposal which Hockey India had prepared on February 27. “By the time the ministry received the proposal, it was Friday and the time was too short for a decision,” they pointed out. In any case, the revised HI proposal too had specified that the camp, beginning on March 5, was only for the fringe players and not for the 18 who had participated in the qualifiers.

“In the previous steering committee meeting, it was decided that the camp would begin on March 13 keeping in mind the Holi festival on March 8. The HI representative had approved that,” ministry sources said.

“The new proposal says the 18 players who figured in the qualifiers will join only on March 15, so why create an uproar over the camp not starting on March 5 if it is not for the core probables?”

The sources said that by increasing the probables list to 48 and advancing the camp to March 5, HI was attempting to scuttle World Series Hockey, which began on February 29.

“HI changed its plan to prevent national players from playing in WSH,” they alleged.