BOMBAY: The Executive Committee of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) today overruled chief coach M. Ganesh’s plea of keeping Indian probable away from the National Hockey Tournament.
IHF President R. Prasad told newsmen here all the players who returned from Holland along with others attending the camp would be free to play for their respective teams in the nationals to be held at Gwalior and Delhi from July 20 under the auspices of the Railway Sports Control Board.
Ganesh had consistently refused to permit his players to have a break from the camp, saying that the preparation for international hockey commitments should come first.
However, a couple of days ago Railways who agreed to ill in the void created by the withdrawal of Wills sponsorship had announced that they would withdraw if the best of the country were not available.
Ganesh was also present at the meeting and looked very disappointed. He declined to. Comment.
THF also decided to hold it’s much talked about annual general meeting at Bhopal in July
Mr. Prasad hoped that this announcement would pacify those who had needlessly made IHF Secretary K.L. Passi a scapegoat blaming him for a delay in the elections.
“We are having elections in time and in Keeping with our constitution,” he said and added that he had written to the Sports Ministry that its threat to stop dealing with Mr, Passi under the pretext of violating the guidelines was unwarranted.
Meanwhile the Senior National Hockey Tournament has been postponed to July20 and will be held at Gwalior and New Delhi, Mr. Prasad said.
The tournament was scheduled to be held from April 26 to May 12 Mr. Prasad said the postponement had become necessary as coach Ganesh had refused to release all the top players before the Champions Cup, which is expected to go on till July 16.
He said that the junior nationals would be held at Hyderabad from May 22 and the sub junior nationals at Pune from May 5.
The IHF has decided to introduce the Federation Cup Championship as in football.
The Executive decided that the top six teams in the next senior nationals would qualify for the federation Cup at Gwalior.
The winners of the tournament would pocket Rs 50,000 while the runners up would get Rs 30,000 Mr Prasad said.
A Janardhan Reddy and Victor Ellis aill be the managers of the Indian Hockey Team to the Champions Trophy and the Inter-Continental Trophy and the InterContinental Trophy, respectively.
Mr. Passi announced that the two Chef-de-Missions will be Gurfran-e-Azam for the Champions Trophy to be held in Berlin from June 10 to 18, and N.P. Katare for the Continental Cup (World Cup qualifying round) to be held in Los Angeles in July. Another important international will be the Asia Cup in Dethi later this year.
The country’s leading hockey clubs which have been running various tournaments for years by withdrawing at the last moment on flimsy grounds will now be suspended,
Mr, Prasad said that the HF Executive took a strong exception to such withdraws and had now formed a three-man committee to take disciplinary action if the reason for not participating did not appear to be genuine.
The committee will now classify about 23 all Indian ranking tournaments and will restrict the participants of teams. This will enable the teams to have penalty of time (0 prepare for the tournaments
‘The committee members are Mr. N.P. Katare (Chairman), Mr. Victor Ellis and Mr. DS. Murthy.
The committee also expressed concern over a private company’s refusal to pay up sponsorship money amounting to Rs 5.5 lakh.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 21, 1989
