No promise to give Rs 5 crore to hockey players: AMR

CHANDIGARH: Hyderabad-based AMR Foundation, which organised charity hockey matches involving national team members here, on Sunday said that the players voluntarily agreed to appear in the event and no commitment to pay them Rs five crore was made.

Hardeep Sandhu, a member of AMR’s organising committee and the Foundation spokesman Ansul Nagar said it was “unfortunate” that the players did not turn up in the match that featured some Bollywood stars and TV personalities yesterday.

“There was never a commitment on the part of AMR Foundation to give a certain specified amount to each of the players. The commitment was to equally distribute the proceeds from the match among the 22 players. To say that Rs five lakh was promised to every player is completely baseless,” said a statement issued by the Foundation.

Earlier, Indian hockey was rocked by yet another controversy with organisers of the event yesterday claiming that the players demanded Rs five crore to feature in the charity matches, an allegation the national team members have denied.

“The refusal by the players at the eleventh honour to come for the match was motivated by demand for Rs five crore for 22-member squad made during his telephonic conversation with captain Rajpal Singh, Prabhjot and Deepak Thakur, which the Foundation was not in a position to pay,” the statement read on Sunday.

The statement also mentioned that founder of the AMR industrialist Mahesh Reddy had even agreed to raise their purse to Rs 54 lakh for the match appearance by adding from his personal account, but the players did not budge from their revised demand for Rs two crore for the World Cup squad.

The organisers of the match also rubbished the players’ allegation that all members were not given flight tickets and said that they had enough proof that all the 22 tickets were sent to them and the bookings had been made well in advance.