OU hockey trials
Osmania University will conduct selection trials to pick the men’s hockey team on September 19 at OU campus grounds from 2.00 pm. Selected players will participate in the South Zone Inter-University tournament. Further details can be had from J Prabhakar Rao (9848216891).
‘TAKING A STEP FORWARD’
Dilip Tirkey Feels India Have Recovered From The Olympic Setback And Are Going In the Right Direction
Krishnakanta Chakraborty TNN
Chennai: Even as Indian hockey went through a roller-coaster ride in the last 10 years, the one man who has stood there like a rock and seen it all is Dilip Tirkey. Players have come and gone, the administrative body has changed, but there has never been anybody asking a question about Tirkey’s position in the team. During an exclusive chat with the TOI, the former India captain talked about his experiences in these turbulent years. Excerpts: What’s the secret behind your consistency?
It’s an honour to play for the country and whenever I enter the field, I give my 100 per cent. It’s probably destiny that I have conducted myself so well for such a long time.
Hailing from a remote Orissa village, how difficult was it to make it big?
I think I am lucky to have made an impression. I just went on working hard and things fell in place. The sports hostel in Panpose near Sundargarh also has huge contribution in my success. What is it about the Sundargarh hostel that it has produced so many quality players?
You have to visit the place to know how the villagers do their bit to promote the game. They are not rich but have great love for hockey . It seems the game’s in their blood. The hostel inmates, too, are very serious while the Orissa government also does its bit. But with so much passion for the game among the commoners, why has the state of the game gone from bad to worse in the country? What’s the future?
I don’t want to go into the politics, but it’s a fact that missing the Olympic berth was a huge setback for us. Then again, we have got over it and trying to look forward. But the players should get adequate support from the federation so that the game is run in a systematic way. But for a long time India haven't performed well at the international circuit …
We haven’t done well in the World Cup or the Olympics. But we won the Asia Cup, done well in Azlan Shah Cup and Afro-Asian Games. Then again, the loss of Jugraj Singh, who was such a brilliant dragflicker, was a big blow. Then Sandeep (Singh) was also forced to sit out for a long time due due to that freak bullet injury. I think we have got good dragflickers in VR Raghunath and Diwakar Ram, but both will need more exposure. Two major events are there in two years, the World Cup and Commonwealth Games. How do you think India should prepare for these? Both the events are in India and we’ll have great advantage. The Ad-hoc committee has already chalked out some plans. In Murugappa Cup, there are selectors who are monitoring our performances and they will be doing the same during the Guru Teg Bahadur hockey tournament, Surjeet Memorial and Nehru Gold Cup. We all have to participate in these tournaments and on the basis of these, 45 players will be chosen for the the national camp. How do you rate current Indian team?
There is a good combination of youth and experience. The juniors have a lot of potential and Sandeep has made a comeback. With Raghunath and Diwakar also there, we have three short-corner specialists. How long will we see Dilip Tirkey playing for the country?
(Laughs). It’s a difficult question. I hurt my ankle and missed a few months of action. I made a comeback in the Murugappa Cup. I’m doing fine now. My ankle feels much better. I’m trying hard to be fit and looking forward to play for my employer.
TOI-Pune:
The final countdown
THERE are less than 30 days to go for the Commonwealth Youth Games 2008 and the city is brimming with excitement. A function was held recently to mark the occasion, which was hosted by gracious MP Suresh Kalmadi and his lovely wife Meera. The mascot of the games, Jigrr, really stole the limelight and it was fun to see him interacting with the audience. The evening commenced with a bang when music maestros Sivamani and Louis Banks performed on stage leaving the crowd gaping for more. Pantaloons Femina Miss India World 2008 Parvathy Omanakuttan and hockey wizard Dhanraj Pillay were also was present at the event. This fun-filled musical evening turned out to be a great show and it was a nice prelude to the upcoming games all set to rock the city!
GUPSHUP! Dhanraj Pillay and Suresh Kalmadi
TOI-Nagpur:
VHA SCHOOL LEAGUE HOCKEY SWAMINARAYAN SCHOOL 3, CHANDAK HIGH SCHOOL Sawan ’trick in Swaminarayan win
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Nagpur: Sawan Chavhan slammed the first hat-trick of the inaugural Under-14 Inter-school Hockey League enabling Swaminarayan High School to rout Ramesh Chandak English School 3-0 at the Hislop College ground here on Monday. The two teams were locked goalless at the end of the first half. After the change of ends, Swaminarayan School turned on the heat with their left-half Sawan making repeated inroads into the rival territory to bang in three goals on a trot. In his first aggressive move in the 30th minute, Sawan switched himself from left to the right flank, dribbled the ball past three defenders before sounding the board to give his team a 1-0 lead. Four minutes later, Sawan made good use of Vishal Patel’s pass, made the lone defender cut a sorry figure, to score the second goal. In a counter attack in the 36th minute Tejas Batra of Ramesh Chandak School fed a fine half-line pass to Shreyas Mukte, but again Sawan arrived in the nick of time to come up with a brilliant save. Two minutes later, Chandak School missed another opportunity when Siddesh Sathe made a complete mess of an easy chance as he was unable to push the ball home on a brilliant pass of Rohit Gaidhane. Finally in the 46th minute, Sawan smashed his third goal and duly completed his hat-trick in style. In his solo run from the left flank, Sawan dribbled the ball past two defenders, positioned himself in front of the target before joyfully banging a goal that helped him to complete a hat-trick. Earlier the tournament was inaugurated by Ramesh Atkare, Joint Commissioner Sales Tax, while VHA president, BC Bhartia, presided over.
Vishal Patel (left) of Swaminarayan School fights for the ball with Pranay Yerpude of Ramesh Chandak High School in the VHA under-14 inter-school hockey tournament at Hislop College ground on Monday
TOI-Mumbai:
CITY SPORT
Pradeep Vijayakar TNN
Pillay bats for Joshi Mumbai: Hockey star Dhanraj Pillay was vehement that the Maharashtra government take notice of the feats of Mumbaikar Devendra Joshi who has made three finals of World billiards events besides winning the Asian title. “I know Joshi is the quiet type and won’t ask for anything. Why can’t the government reward him just as they do the Asian Games and Olympic stars?’’ asked Dhanraj as a felicitation function by Samira Habitat at Matunga Gymkhana on Saturday. Sameer Nerurkar of Samira presented a cheque for Rs one lakh in appreciation of Joshi’s recent feat of reaching the IBSF world time format final where he lost to Pankaj Advani. “For us Joshi is a winner because of the qualities he has shown and his consistency for a decade and more,’’ said Nerurkar. For three-time World winner Mike Ferreira, Joshi’s feat reminded him on his own. “I empathise with Joshi. Like him I too was runner-up three times in the world event. Khalid Ansari, the noted sportswriter, told me that I would always be the runner-up never the champ. This fired me up to win the title and prove a point. Joshi should follow my example and prove his detractors wrong. When in full flow Joshi is one of the most delightful players to watch. I saw him score a 600-plus break in Australia. I hope he goes on win the elusive world title,’’ said Ferreira. ONGC down Central Railway ONGC defeated Central Railway 3-2 in the opening match of the guru Tegh Bahadur Hockey tournament at the MHA Mahindra Hockey stadium on Monday. ONGC jumped to a 3-0 lead with the goals coming from Diwakar Ram who scored two drag flick goals. Amarjit Pratap scored the third. Nilesh mane and babar Khan reduced the margin for Central Railway. In the second match of the day, Indian Navy defeated Mumbai Customs 5-3 via the tie-breaker. Juned Jada gave Customs the lead but Surender Kumar equalised for Navy.
TOI-Delhi:
Hockey academy left groundless
To encourage women’s hockey the Rajasthan State Sports Council has set up an academy at Ajmer exclusively for women players. But it lacks basic infrastructure. Leave alone an artificial turf, the academy has no ground it call as its own. It has to depend on the playing fields of local schools grounds for training. Neither does the academy have a hostel. In fact, there are not even a sufficient number of girls on its rolls to form two teams for practice games. There are just 20 girls who are billeted in the youth hostel. It looks like little planning was done before the academy began. When the academy will acquire the basic facility of an artificial grass pitch is not known. The state hockey association was not consulted by the sports council. Nor was it involved in selection process of girls for the academy.
Air India ground IOC to lift Murugappa Cup Chennai: Favourites Air India won the 84th Murugappa Gold Cup MCC Hockey Tournament, defeating Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) 6-5 in a closely-contested final, which was stretched to tie-breaker here on Sunday. The teams were levelled one-all after the 70-minutes regulation time and 15 minutes of extra time. During the regulation time play, IOC went into the lead in the 32nd minute through a penalty corner conversion by Raghunath and went into the breather with a 1-0 lead. In the second half Air India were much more organised in their attacks and pestered the rivals with short passes. Air India also had their share of luck when they got a penalty corner in the seventh minute of the match but it went in vain. During the tie-breaker, both the teams made a brilliant start scoring four goals each. However, Air India’s Gauravj Tokhi held his nerves to net the fifth and last push, while IOC’s Deepak Thakur’s feeble shot failed to cross the line.
TOI-Lucknow:
Hockey selection
The district level selection tournament of the girls open college hockey team will be held at the Karamat Hussain Muslim Girls Inter College on September 18 at 3 pm. On September 20 at 3 pm, the divisional level selections will be organised. The girls’ hockey team of Lucknow Division will participate in the state-level college hockey tournament slated at Jhansi from October 5.
TOI-Chennai:
Railways’ red flag for World Cup winners
1975 Hockey Triumph Ranks Below C’wealth Medal In Ministry Guidelines
Hari Hara Nandanan I TNN
Chennai: Already in a shambles, Indian hockey seems to get the cold shoulder even from the administrators and the Government. How else would you explain the Ministry of Railways’ three-decade-old indecision on the allocation of rail passes to five members of the 1975 World Cup winning hockey squad? It is indeed a crying shame that the ministry has adopted double standards while applying qualifying criteria for sportspersons eligible for privileges. In hockey , triumph at the World Cup — an inarguably more difficult field than the the Asian Games or Commonwealth Games — is not considered good enough to warrant the rail pass privilege. As a result, Brigadier HJS Chimni, Ashok Dewan and Leslie Fernandez, Omkar Singh and PE Kalaiah, members of the 1975 squad that won the title, have been ignored for the rail passes while nine members from the same squad earned the privilege by virtue of their presence in the bronze medal-winning Indian squad in the 1972 Olympics. Strangely, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, while replying to information sought by Augustine Roy Rozario, president of Chennai’s Anglo-Indian Aassociation, under the RTI Act was not in a position to say whether a bronze medal secured in hockey was more valuable than a World Cup gold. Its reply was as evasive as ever. “The information is being collected from ad-hoc committee, hockey .” The Railway ministry has granted rail passes to Arjuna Awardees, Olympic medallists, gold medallists in Asian and Commonwealth Games. In 1997, the ministry also added Dronacharyas and Rajiv Khel Ratna awardees to the list of beneficiaries and yet, the World Cup was not good enough to get the nod. “It is not just the pass that is a bone of contention,” says Leslie Fernandez, goalkeeper of the 1975 squad. “Being an exrailway employee, I already have the railway pass but how can the authorities frame such a system where World Cup is deemed less important than Asian Games or Commonwealth Games medal? Such a double standard could spill over to sportspersons in all disciplines,” he reasons. The Government’s double standards is also evident when the pensions to medallists in various disciplines decided by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports are compared, making it a clear case of mismatch between the standards set by two ministries. The sports ministry, in another reply to Rozario’s question under RTI Act said, that the “gold medallists of Commonwealth/Asian Games are entitled for a pension of Rs 7000 per month and the gold medallists of World Cup of any tournament including hockey , are entitled for a pension of Rs 8000 per month.” The RTI application also sought the details of MPs recommending the case of the World Cup winning players to the Railway ministry and the reply mentioned that between 2006 and 2007, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, A Krishna Swamy and Francis Fanthome wrote to the ministry regarding the status of the five players. The ministry’s reply underlined the point, “it is not feasible to expand the scope of existing scheme to include World Cup winners due to financial and other repurcussion.” It is indeed shocking that the financial angle has been highlighted because the World Cup victory remains the lone one in Indian hockey history, and even then only five remain to be considered while 33 Dronacharyas got the privilege since 1997.
TOI-Goa:
Big win for Monte de Guirim
St. Anthony’s HS, Monte de Guirim, hammered Our Lady of Rosary HSS, Dona Paula, 9-0 to move into the semifinals of Nehru under-17 girls’ hockey Cup, organized by the Directorate of Sports and Youth Affairs, at Peddem Sports Complex, Mapusa, on Monday. Minakshi was the star for St. Anthony’s scoring four goals while Dakshata netted a brace. Divya, Bindia and Lavita were the other goalgetters for the winning side. In the boys under-15 tournament, St. Anthony’s HS, Majorda, were awarded a walkover as their opponents Don Bosco HS failed to turn up at the venue.
The Hindu:
Vijaywada: Double for St. Thomas
Nuzvid’s St. Thomas High School won a double by winning the under-14 boys’ and girls’ basketball finals in the three-day Krishna District Secondary Schools inter-school sports and games meet, here on Monday.
The results: (all finals):
Basketball: U-14 boys: St. Thomas (Nuzvid) bt Nirmala (Vij) 16-10; U-14 girls: St. Thomas (Nuzvid) bt ZP Girls HS (Nuzvid) 10-2.
U-17 boys: Nirmala (Vij) bt St Thomas (Nuzvid) 10-9; U-17 girls: ZP Girls HS (Nuzvid) bt St. Ann’s (Nuzvid) 10-8.
Hockey: U-17 boys: Vivekananda Centenary HS (Vij) bt ZPHS (Mopidevi) 1-0.
U-17 girls: Nirmala HS (Vij) bt ZPHS (Mopidevi) 1-0.
Hyderabad: Selection trials
Osmania University will organise selection trials in hockey for men and in table tennis for both men and women on its campus on September 23 from 2.00 p.m. For details call 9848216891.
It was also announced that the inter-college competitions in powerlifting and weightlifting scheduled from September 16 to 18 have been postponed. Fresh dates will be intimated later.
Jamal Mohd. keeps trophy
TIRUCHI: Host Jamal Mohammed College, with nine points, at the end of the semifinal league retained the Khajamian Rolling Trophy at the eighth inter-collegiate hockey tournament here on Monday.
Arul Anandar College and St. Joseph’s College secured four points apiece, but the former was adjudged second on better goal difference
The results (semifinal league): Jamal Mohammed 4 (Saravanan, Sathish, Etraj, Irudayaraja) bt Sacred Heart 0; Arul Anandar 1 (Abraham Jesuraj) drew with St. Joseph’s 1 (Prabhu); Arul Anandar 4 (Saranraj 3, Ashok Kumar 1) bt Sacred Heart 1 (Premnath); Jamal Mohammed 3 (Saravanan 2, Irudayaraja 1) bt St. Joseph’s College 0.
Asian Age:
Kaushik poised for hockey top job
By Harpreet Kaur Lamba
New Delhi
Sept. 15: The outcome of the Chile Olympic qualifiers might have left Indian hockey in dire straits, but, six months later it is time to pick up the pieces once again.
For that, the five wise men, along with the ad-hoc committee chaired by Suresh Kalmadi, will hold a crucial meeting in the capital on Tuesday. The appointment of a new national coach and the selection of 50 probables for the India camp, are on the agenda .
Following the K.P.S. Gill saga and the chaotic times under the then-coach Joaquim Carvalho, the ad-hoc committee is now keen to find a man who can bail out the national game from the mess.
The appointment will be done keeping in mind the crucial 2010 Commonwealth Games and the hockey World Cup — both to be staged in the Capital.
Though a number of names did the rounds initially, sources suggest that Maharaj Krishan Kaushik has been shortlisted for the hot seat. Air India coach Harendra Singh is expected to join as assistant coach, while Bangalore-based A.B. Subbaiah will be hired as the goalkeeping expert.
Ajay Kumar Bansal, who last coached India at the Azlan Shah tournament in May, will be retained as the junior coach, it was learnt.
Though an official announcement is awaited, chairman of selectors Ajitpal Singh said on Monday, "The best man will be picked keeping in mind the interest of the game. It will be a crucial decision, wait till tomorrow."
Though Kaushik’s experience and success rate with the men’s and women’s team in the past make him the best of the lot, the Delhi-based coach is already in charge of the women’s national team.
Any change in order will mean that the ad-hoc committee will then have a separate job of finding a coach for the women’s team. Also, it remains to be seen if the decision will find favour with the Indian Women’s Hockey Federation.
Interestingly, Kaushik has not joined the ongoing women’s team camp in Bangalore, Vasu Thapliyal is taking charge in his absence.
Kaushik himself refused to divulge much. "Yes, I am in Delhi at present. The ad-hoc committee will take a decision tomorrow, and whatever they decide will be acceptable to me."
There were also doubts regarding Subbaiah initially, after he had informed the committee of his unavailability owing to prior commitments. The induction of Kaushik, however, forced him to change his mind.
The four coaches travelled to Beijing Summer Games last month, to gather inputs for future events.
DNA:
ONGC weather late CR burst
The oilmen survive Central Railways challenge to record a thrilling 3-2 victory
Mihir Vasavda. Mumbai
ONGC Delhi survived a late surge by Central Railway (CR) as they edged out the latter 3-2 in a keenly contested encounter on the opening day of All India Guru Tegh Bahadur Gold Cup hockey tournament at the Mahindra Stadium here on Monday.The railwaymen scored two goals in as many minutes in the later stages of the match, after trailing by three goals. But ONGC held on to their slender lead and booked a place in the next round. Nilesh Mane led the CR comeback, scoring through a penalty corner in the 60th minute. Just as the Delhi team restarted, CR took charge of the possession and wasted no time to break through the ONGC defence, as mid fielder Babar Khan netted the second past the custodian Kamaldeep Singh.CR kept the pressure up on the ONGC and as time ran out for them for the equalizer, their coach Rakesh Potiditi prayed his team could somehow manage the equalizer. “We missed few opportunities in the first half and that mattered in the end,” was all he said.ONGC dominated the proceedings and it was not long before they opened scoring after Indian international Diwakar Ram found the target in the 17th minute. Ram doubled his tally just before breather in the 34th minute, while Amarjeet Singh netted the third in 46th minute.In other matches of the day, Indian Navy defeated Mumbai Customs 5-3 via the tie breaker after the match ended 1-1 at the regulation time, and Maharashtra State Police thrashed Sports Authority of India 5-2.
Mumbai Mirror:
Ram’s brace for ONGC on debut
Dhananjay Roy
ONGC’s Diwakar Ram scores his side’s second goal against Central Railway yesterday
Indian hockey has been through turbulent times this year, but one player who has managed to come out unscathed is drag-flicker Diwakar Ram. In fact, the 18-year-old has only grown in stature with every passing tournament.“It was really tough for us after we failed to qualify for the Olympics. But there’s no point thinking about it all the time. I am sure things will be better in the coming major tournaments,” said the defender who has signed up with ONGC and is representing the side at the 8th Guru Tegh Bahadur Gold Cup tournament.ONGC beat Central Railway 3-2 and advanced to the quarterfinals where they now take on Air India on Thursday. Ram scored the first two goals for the victors.But why did he opt for ONGC given that he was playing for India Oil which itself is a strong outfit. “ONGC is in the process of building a young team and I thought it would be beneficial for me to play for them,” explained Ram who has been placed in the company’s HR department. What does he think about his own position in the Indian squad given that Sandeep Singh and V Raghunath too have delivered the goods in the recent past. “It’s a healthy competition and I must ensure that I am always fit and in form,” he said.Results: ONGC beat Central Railways 3-2, Indian Navy beat Mumbai Customs 5-3, MSP beat SAI 5-2.
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