Hockey India overlooks the controversial hockey associations in Madhya Pradesh for the nationals
Similar to the top-most issue, currently prevailing in Indian hockey world, the dispute between Hockey India (HI) and Indian Hockey Federation (IHF), there are three hockey associations working in Madhya Pradesh (MP) that are claiming to conduct the sport
within the state.
Due to this controversy, many top-most MP players were confused about which squad to join for the HI’s 1st Senior Men's National Hockey Championship, currently underway in Bhopal.
Instead of resolving the matter, HI preferred to stay out of the mess and allowed a Hockey academy named MP Hockey Academy to participate in the championship.
However, the fine players opted to take part in very weak teams, like Meghalaya, that barely has a name when it comes to national hockey.
One of the players, not revealing his identity, stated, “We had no option after realising that only the academy players would be allowed to play in the national championship. We never wanted to play against our home state but there was no other option.”
Many more states have troublesome circumstances regarding the authority to run hockey which is one of the reasons for the decreasing the number of hockey events within India in the last twenty years.
The three associations namely Madhya Bharat Hockey Association (MBHA), Madhya Pradesh Hockey Association (MPHA) and Bhopal Hockey Association (BHA) are fighting over the right to carry out the sport within the state.
Undoubtedly, MP’s capital city, Bhopal, has given many international hockey faces to India like Samir Dad, Inam-ur-Rehman and the honorary Jalaluddin Rizvi, who was given Arjun award.
One of the players accused HI for such debacle and said, “Hockey India has given affiliation to an academy instead of any association. They could easily have asked the factions to sit and take a decision.”
This is for sure that if there would be more than one claimants responsible for running the sport in the state, there will not only be misconducts, but also loss of talent for Madhya Pradesh, when the potential players will move elsewhere for representing
some other state in the national level competitions.
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