No, not Kalmadi again!

BEHIND THE NEWS

Though the prestigious Hero Honda hockey World Cup ismerely 65 days away, the action as always with Indian sport is not onthe field, but off it. Yes, the controversial elections to HockeyIndia need to be completed before the tournament gets off the ground.In fact. it is a pre-requisite for the tournament's award to India.Moves are being made on the Hockey India chessboard to create aunified body, as per FIH's diktat. Insiders claim that two powerfulindividuals may face off against one another for the president's post.Athletics Federation of India Life President and Indian OlympicAssociation president Suresh Kalmadi may well run for office. Thecandidature of Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal isalso in the air. Badal is being convinced by Hockey Punjab secretaryPargat Singh to announce his candidature and lift Indian hockey outthis abyss of gloom. Now it remains to be seen whether there will be aface off or a compromise will see one of the two being appointedpresident. It also remains to be seen as which state body nominatesKalmadi.
More importantly, can the AFI life president also become Hockey Indiapresident. It can happen only in India that an individual heads twodifferent sports bodies, and is chairman of the Commonwealth GamesOrganising Committee. It will tantamount to appropriation of absolutepower. Or will Kalmadi junk athletics, appoint one of his minionsthere and assume HI presidentship. That will depend on Badal to agreat extent. Another player in this equation may be former IHFsecretary general Jyothikumaran who was sacked for accepting a bribeand actually triggered the fall of the dominos in Indian hockey.Jyothikumaran will come to the elections from Tamil Nadu. The onlyother player of any relevance will be J B Roy, Sahara chief SubrataRoy's brother who heads the Bengal Hockey Association. Will he alignwith one of the two - Kalmadi or Badal - or will he make a play forthe president's post himself is still a matter of conjecture. Roy isopposed to Kalmadi led IOA's super session of IHF. Moreover, whenKalmadi was set to become president of HI at the hastily convened HIelections on November 18 in Srinagar, it was J B Roy along with IndianWomen's Hockey boss Amrit Bose who scuppered his gameplan by roping inthe sports ministry.
Former player and selector Aslam Sher Khan told sportzpower thatKalmadi may well have designs on HI for he was single handedlyresponsible for keeping top players out of hockey administration. Infact Sher Khan said, "Kalmadi broke the back of IHF, turned it into adysfunctional body and is trying to ride the tiger called hockey. Hismain objective is ensure that politicians rule the roost in HI andformer players are kept outside the body's purview." With January 29now as the new D Day in Indian hockey, various factions are preparingfor battle. What is crucial for the elections that there has to be asingle unified state body represented in the polls. So, this iscreating problems. Maharashtra for instance has three state bodies -Mumbai, Maharashtra and Vidarbha.
Similarly Punjab has not been given affiliation even though Pepsu andPunjab have merged to forma unified Punjab Hockey. Sukhbir Singh Badalwill fight the presidential election from Punjab Hockey. This willqueer the pitch for Kalmadi. With the one state, one body norm incirculation, multiple bodies have to merge before the elections.Meanwhile there is no clarity on the World Cup event per se either.While we know that the major Dhyan Chand stadium will be ready for thetournament, the hockey World Cup returns to India after 28 years. Italso provides with a huge platform to show the world that its hockeygene pool is alive and kicking. By winning a bronze at Salta in theChampions Challenge, it has given notice that it is taking baby stepstowards mending itself. But ranked as it is at number 12 in the FIHteam seedings, it will have to play out of its skins to enter the topsix