India facing hurdles to participate in the Under-18 Asia Cup: Hockey News
There are growing concerns that India will not take part in the Under-18 Asia Cup 2011 to be held in Singapore from June 17 to 26, due to unavailability of their team and required staff..
According to Hockey India’s (HI) Executive Director, Anupam Ghulati, missing out this event will be no big deal despite the fact that it provided India with many stars like Rajpal Singh, Jugraj Singh and Tushar Khandker. He added that the tour is not something for which much effort is required. A team will be picked out soon that will undergo training.
The officials, who took the initiative for arranging the age-group competitions, are sitting silently, according to HI’s Secretary, Narinder Batra.
"While the national team coaches are cleared by the sports ministry, clearance for all other age-group coaching panels and support staff comes at the level of the Sports Authority of India (SAI). For a long time, the post of DG, SAI was vacant," Batra said.
Furthermore, he said that as the vacancy has been filled up now, the request for a panel of coaches has been forwarded and it is expected that by the end of this week, everything will be set. According to Batra, as soon as the staff is recruited, the team will be selected.
Pargat Singh, a former Indian captain, who is currently the chairman of HI’s technical committee, yesterday, on June 2, was surprised of not knowing about the invitation until now and accused the officials for the mess.
Above all, the organisers of Asia Cup, Singapore Hockey Federation (SHF), revealed that they were informed that India will not be sending its team to Singapore because of financial crisis.
An official of SHF commented, “An invitation was sent to them but we never got any response. Later we were informed by the Asian Hockey Federation, under whose aegis the tournament takes place, which India has decided not to field a team because they cannot afford to. We have had no official communiqué from Hockey India directly.”
Apart from India and the host team Singapore, the other teams to participate in the Asia Cup include Malaysia, China, Pakistan, Korea, Chinese Taipei, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
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