May 9

Sundeep Misra
Friday, May 09, 2008

Chandigarh - Will Sukhbir Badal be the new chief of the Punjab Hockey Association?

If the statement issued today by the Shiromani Akali Dal chief is any indication, Sukhbir Badal, may be in the run to head the restructured Indian Hockey Federation as well.

“Hockey is my personal agenda” Sukhbir Badal has been quoted as saying offering on behalf of the SAD-BJP alliance government to nurture and train the national team for next four years.

Traditionally, hockey in Punjab has always remained under the direct control of the police. It has been a tradition and unwritten constitution that head of the state police would be the president of the Punjab Hockey Association and every district police chief as president of the district hockey association.

Sukhbir Badal, indications are, is set to change this convention. To get into the national body, he has to represent a state unit and what would be better option than representing his own state in the Indian Hockey Federation.

His unstinted support to the Indian Olympic Association in suspending the IHF after removing its president KPS Gill is indication enough of things to follow.

Even before Sukhbir Badal offered to train the national team for next four years, the previous Congress government headed by Capt Amarinder Singh had also made a similar offer.

There were exchanges of notes and correspondence between the Punjab government and the IHF but it fell through on technical grounds.

At one stage, the then Punjab government was under pressure to announce a one-time major grant to the IHF for training the national team.

A couple of years ago, the IHC had declared Punjab as host for the National Hockey Championship for five years in a row. But after holding the first of five editions in Amritsar, Jalandhar and Ludhiana, the agreement ended abruptly because of change of ruling party in the state.

Now the SAD chief has been reminding the IHF that in 1975, it was the Punjab government that had trained the national team that won the 1975 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur.

The Punjab government had chosen Panjab University Campus for training the team and medical support for fitness of players came from the PGI.

It was the team of Balbir Singh Senior as manager, Gurcharan Singh Bodhi as coach and Dr Rajinder Kalra as doctor of the team that put India back on top of world hockey.

Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Ministers’ media adviser Harcharan Bains confirmed that the state government’s offer to sponsor the preparation of Indian hockey teams for international events. The Chief Minister had been "deeply pained" at the manner in which the sport had suffered a decline in recent years and was willing to "contribute in every possible manner to help the revival of the country's premier sporting discipline."

Sukhbir Singh Badal extended his "full support to the IOA-backed organizational restructuring of the 'affaire de la hockey' and said that he was in touch with the India Olympic Association on "charting the way forward for Indian hockey".

“People have been shocked by the shameful manner in which the country had suffered hockey humiliation at the international level, failing for the first time to qualify for the Olympics.”
 
(Courtesy, The Tribune)

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