BOMBAY: M. Somayya has been retained as the captain of the Indian hockey team fo the Seoul Olympics. But forwards Ran Prakash Singh and Vir Pratap Singh, which played recently at Ipoh, Nairobi and Pakistan, have been dropped.
The sixteen members are: Rs. Rawal and Mark Patterson (GK) Pargat Singh MP, Singh and Ashok Kumar (backs) M Somayya (capt) Vivek Singh, Sunjit Kum ar, BK, Subramani (halves) M. Femades Gundeep Kumar, Jude Felix, Balwinder Singh and M. Shahid (forwards),
The team will be accompanied by Jha man Lal Sharma (manager) M. P. Ganesh (chief coach). B.P Govinda (coach) and V. Bhalla (team doctor).
Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) president, R.V. Prasad who also chaired the selection committee said that apart from the IHF panel of Udham Singh, Gurdass, Balbir Singh and D. Paes the government nominee Balbir Singh (sr). Sports Authority of India’s nominee Balkishn and Indian Olympic Association representative the manager and chief coach also took part in the selection.
Officials of IHF were rendered both breathless and hushed by the barrage of questions as to how the team was “leaked” in New Delhi on Friday. The executive council of the IHF met here to ratify the selection of the team, quite a formality really, because somebody in the IHF could not keep a secret,
THE president R. Prasad seemed to beat a total loss when the questions were asked following the announcement of the 16 strong squad,
India which is in group ‘B* begin their campaign on September 18 against Soviet Union. Thereafter the group matches are against West Germany (September 20). South Korea (September 22), Canada (September 24) and Britain (September 26),
Article extracted from this publication >> September 9, 1988
