350 junior hockey players’ fate in quandary due to IHF-HI feud

M Ratnakar, TNN

HYDERABAD: The fate of 350-odd youngsters fledgling their skills at the Junior National Hockey Tournament is in a quandary. Very few of the participants representing the 32 teams know that the tournament being conducted by the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) will not help them to realise their dream of representing the country.

For, IHF is not the authorized body to select a national side and only Hockey India (HI) has the right to pick a team to represent India. According to the interim orders of the Supreme Court, HI will field teams in future games. A letter released in December by Shankar Lal, under secretary, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, says that the government of India is providing requisite support to HI and the body is required to hold the national championships in various categories.

Contrary to the claims of Ramachandra Rao, vice-president Hyderabad Hockey Association (HHA), IHF is not authorized to select a national team. On the eve of the Junior Nationals, Rao said that probables for the 2013 World Cup will be selected during this meet and the selected players would undergo long term training.

Refuting the statement of Rao, Niranjan Reddy, joint secretary HI said that Junior National will serve no purpose. “It’s just a waste of time and money. As per the court orders and government directions ours is the only authorized body to select national teams. I am shocked to see the statement of Mr Rao. It’s very misguiding,” Reddy told ToI, adding that IHF has no right to provide affiliation to new teams.

“How can a team from Dadar & Nager Haveli play in nationals. It’s a new team and as the matter is in court IHF has no right to provide affiliation to a new team. We have seen teams like Baroda, Pune district playing in the competition. Never in my 30-year association with Indian hockey I had noticed district teams in nationals,” he added.

Incidentally, Dinesh Reddy, director general of police, is the president of HHA and vice-president of IHF.

“They are misleading the DGP. To conduct nationals one needs to spend close to 20 lakhs. Why do you need to spend so much of money and waste the time budding players. Moreover, there were no doctors to attend the injured players. Maybe knowing the state of affairs here DGP had skipped the inaugural function,” said another official of HI.