The Hindu: Union Academy and Nehru-NDMC Academy win as finals degenerate into a farce

Striving in the heat and humidity and competing back-to-back matches — one for their school team and the other for their academy — was all in a day’s work for the 10 players who contested two finals at the Shivaji Stadium here on Tuesday.

The final of the Nehru-Dhyan Chand (under-15) hockey cup for Delhi schools saw Union Academy defeating Government Sarvodaya Vidyalaya, Shahpur Jat, 3-1. The scorers were Keshav Tyagi, Ankit Tamta and Arpit Yadav.

An hour earlier, the final of the Nehru-Gian Singh Test Series for academies was played at the same venue. The Nehru-NDMC Academy lost to SGPC Academy 2-3. The scorers for the losing side were Rahul and Keshav Tyagi.

With the same 10 players representing two different sides in the two finals, the competition was reduced to a farce. What is interesting is that one of the teams, the NDMC Academy, exists only on paper. As yet.

Jawaharlal Nehru Hockey Tournament Society’s secretary Kukoo Walia admitted as much. “We needed to have a team for the tournament and we are still working out the modalities of the academy. For this event, we managed to get players from a few schools and academies but we will most likely get things sorted by the end of this month. We are looking at having at least 200 kids with proper infrastructure, coaches and training,” Walia told The Hindu .

Asked how the same players could play for two teams, Walia defended it saying they were playing in two different tournaments. However, he still could justify the players having to play back-to-back matches in the extreme weather.

Interestingly, both teams share a coach in Sri Prakash though the NDMC Academy side had no officially named coach or manager on the official score-sheet.

The other teams were visibly aggrieved.

“If this is what Delhi school hockey is going to be like, where will genuine talent come from? The actual age-group kids will only get disheartened and their schools will also stop promoting the game,” one of the coaches said.

The results: Finals: Nehru-Dhyan Chand Cup: Union Academy 3 (Keshav Tyagi, Ankit Tamta, Arpit Yadav) bt Govt. Sarvodaya Vidyalaya 1 (Ajay Singh).

Nehru-Gian Singh Academy Test Series: SGPC Academy, Amritsar 3 (Parmeet Singh 2, Harinder Singh) bt Nehru-NDMC Academy 2 (Rahul, Keshav Tyagi).