News for 09 June 2020
All the news for Tuesday 9 June 2020
IOC asked to take action against Batra for "illegal" election as FIH and IOA President
By Liam Morgan
Narinder Batra is locked in a bitter dispute with other senior IOA officials ©Getty Images
A senior Indian Olympic Association (IOA) official has claimed Narinder Batra's election as International Hockey Federation (FIH) President was "illegal" and accused him of making false declarations on his way to securing the top job at the IOA.
In an escalation of a bitter internal dispute at the IOA, vice-president Sudhanshu Mittal has asked International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and the ruling Executive Board to "take appropriate action" against Batra.
Mittal claims in a letter to Bach, the Executive Board and other IOC members - seen by insidethegames - that Batra was still the head of Hockey India when he was elected FIH President in November 2016, which Mittal writes would be in breach of the worldwide body's statutes.
In a statement to insidethegames, the FIH said that the "electoral process of the 2016 FIH Presidential election was done in compliance with the FIH Statutes at the time and validated by the FIH Executive Board."
It also confirmed that Batra was the head of Hockey India when elected FIH President.
Batra, a member of the IOC by virtue of his IOA Presidency, resigned as Hockey India President two weeks after being voted in as FIH President.
According to reports in the Indian media, Batra's resignation from his Hockey India role was ratified in July 2017.
But Mittal also alleges that the 63-year-old was a representative of Hockey India when he stood for IOA President, despite him having relinquished the position five months before the election took place in December 2017.
Mittal accused Batra of "giving false declarations and information regarding his association with Hockey India to the FIH as well as to the IOA".
IOA vice-president Sudhanshu Mittal has asked for the IOC to take action against Narinder Batra ©ITG
"In December 2017, the IOA elections were due," Mittal wrote.
"Shockingly, Batra was nominated as a candidate for the IOA President’s post and he accepted the same.
"Batra was a representative on behalf of the Hockey India in IOA’s elections and voted as a representative on behalf of Hockey India.
"Since he had already resigned from any office bearer’s post with the Hockey India in order to comply with the FIH statute, there is no possible way that he could be in the Executive Committee of Hockey India, unless Batra had given false declaration to the FIH and to everyone else that he had resigned from the Hockey India."
Batra told Indian media outlets that he would respond to the claims made by Mittal when he returns to his office after his quarantine, self-imposed due to members of his family testing positive for coronavirus, has concluded.
The letter marks the latest development in a row between Batra and other senior officials at the IOA.
Batra has been involved in a public dispute with IOA secretary general Rajeev Mehta, while feuding factions within the organisation have traded accusations and allegations.
Batra and Mehta have been at loggerheads in recent months after the IOA President said he would assume many of the functions usually carried out by the secretary general.
His comments triggered a split within the IOA and led to Mehta accusing Batra of acting illegally by seemingly dissolving the IOA Ethics Commission.
Inside the Games
IOA's Sudhanshu Mittal claims president Narinder Batra was not eligible to contest for the post
File image of IOA president Narinder Batra. Getty images
Two-and-a-half years after Narinder Batra's election as Indian Olympic Association chief, one of its vice presidents has questioned his taking up the top job, saying he was not even eligible to contest the polls under the then constitution.
IOA vice president Sudhanshu Mittal, in a letter to the International hockey federation FIH, alleged that "a major cover up" was done to allow Batra contest election for the top sports job of the country.
Mittal said Batra's eligibility was "falsified" twice and one even impacted his position as FIH president in 2017.
Mittal's allegations on the "illegality" of Batra's election have come amid the feud among the top brass of the IOA. He had earlier written to the International Olympic Committee, claiming that Batra was "illegally" elected as IOA president.
Batra on Monday had said that he will reply to Mittal's allegations once he joins office after his home quarantine.
Mittal's main allegation is that the IOA constitution of 2013, as approved by the IOC, provided that the presidential candidate will have to be a member of the preceding executive council and Batra was not a member of that.
He alleged that constitution's interpretation was changed to membership of two preceding executive councils instead of only the last council in a Special General Body Meeting held on 29 November, 2017.
It happened two days after the nomination of candidates was released to allow Batra contest the elections. Batra was elected IOA chief on 14 December 2017.
"It is very clear...that this decision to change the interpretation of the constitution of the IOA (in the SGM of Nov 29, 2017) to include any two preceding (2012 and 2014) Executive Council instead of preceding (2014) Executive Council was taken by the General Assembly after three people filed nomination for the post of president," Mittal said in the letter.
"To be more specific, Batra was not eligible to contest for the post of president on the date of his filing of nomination, on or prior to 27/11/2017."
He also said that the minutes of the SGM which mentioned a change in interpretation of the constitution was only approved on December 14, 2017.
"If the election had to be duly held in accordance with the changed interpretation of the constitution, the election notice should have been issued after 14/12/2017," he wrote.
His another allegation is that Batra was nominated by Hockey India to the electoral college of the IOA for the 2017 polls despite the fact that he was no longer associated with it since he had already resigned as its president following his election as FIH chief.
Under IOA constitution, the person nominated by each member units must be the members of the executive bodies of these units.
"...Batra was either president of FIH in his personal capacity and did not represent Hockey India or he represented Hockey India as an Executive Board member to the electoral college of the IOA," Mittal wrote in the letter.
"The president of international hockey federation who is responsible for integrity compromised it for self interest."
Under FIH constitution, all members of the Executive Board (except for presidents of continental federations) hold office in their personal capacity and not as representatives of any member or any other organisation.
Firstpost
Measuring Cup
Ashley Morrison
The International Hockey Federation announced last week the qualification process for their World Cup events in 2022/23 via the Continental Championships. The qualifiers and the Continental Championships having been impacted by the postponement of the Olympic games. 
A Story Of Denial And Injustice: Was Playing Hockey A Sin For Dhyan Chand And Balbir Singh?
With six Olympic hockey gold medals between them, Dhyan Chand and Balbir Singh Senior have been relegated to the backburner by cricket-mad Indians and sports administrators with myopia
Soumitra Bose
A masterful Dhyan Chand in action in the 1936 Berlin Olympics
In March 2015, Balbir Singh Senior was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Indian hockey federation (Hockey India). Interestingly, the award was named after Dhyan Chand, a man with whom he shares the pedestal in debates on India’s greatest hockey player ever. Balbir Singh died on May 20 at the age of 96. While opinion remains divided about ‘the greatest’, Dhyan Chand and Balbir share a common story—that of being denied and ignored.
While Sachin Tendulkar getting the Bharat Ratna in February 2014, within three months of retiring from Test cricket, gained ready acceptance, the government’s mulish overlooking of the two legends who, with three Olympic gold medals each spanned the glory years of the national sport, remains one of the greatest mysteries of Indian sport. “Maybe they did not have the right connections at the government level,” says 1975 World Cup-winning Indian hockey captain Ajit Pal Singh. Dhyan Chand won three (1928, 1932, 1936) successive Olympic gold medals before Independence and Balbir was part of another three straight gold-winning teams in the London (1948), Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956) Olympic Games.
Historian Ramachandra Guha explains the lack of peripheral vision of the men in charge of sports in India. “If we didn’t win the cricket World Cup in 1983, hockey would still have been our favourite sport. Dhyan Chand has not got his due because he played hockey; Ramanathan Krishnan, who reached the Wimbledon semis twice, didn’t get his due because he played tennis; world champion Wilson Jones didn’t get his due because he was in billiards and five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand hasn’t got his due because he play chess. All non-cricketing sporting greats don’t get their dues in India and Balbir was one among them. We are obsessed with cricket, we pamper them, give them too much value and forget other legends,” says Guha, adding that Anand deserved the Bharat Ratna more than Tendulkar.
Gold again
Balbir Singh leads the Indian team at the medal ceremony in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne
Having grown up on stories of Balbir and his two inseparable partners in the forward line—Udham Singh and Raghubir Singh Bhola—Guha had a chance meeting with Balbir Senior in Vancouver in 2005. “I was there for a talk on Gandhi and Balbir showed up. I wanted to touch his feet; he stepped back and was happy to shake hands. Sikhs believe in equality and that was the measure of this man in his 80s,” recalls Guha. “Balbir and Dhyan Chand were easily as great as Kapil Dev and Tendulkar or Dhoni and Kohli, may be greater. They should have got the Bharat Ratna before Tendulkar.”
And though they live on in countless memories, lack of government recognition has left both families bitter.
Professor Swaran Singh, who wrote Balbir’s biography in Punjabi, points out that the International Olympic Association had acknowledged Balbir’s contribution during the 2012 London Olympics. “He was among the 16 chosen sportspersons to represent the history of the modern Games. Balbir is the only Indian to be on such an elite panel that had Jessie Owens, among others. Even Dhyan Chand was not there. The IOC made him an Olympic ‘ratna’, but it is unfortunate that the Indian government still hasn’t.”
Prof Singh says Balbir, who saw Dhyan Chand as his guru, never yearned for anything. He would never express his frustration, but his family wanted him to get the Bharat Ratna. In 2015, when Balbir was over 90, Swaran Singh published his biography Golden Goal. Balbir himself had earlier written two books—Golden Hat Trick (1977), his autobiography, and Golden Yardstick (2008), on coaching. “Over the past two years, Balbir was in an out of hospital. He said he was living in extra time and the moment the golden goal would be scored, he would be gone forever,” says Prof Singh.
Balbir after scoring in the 1948 London Olympics
Balbir’s close associates always saw him as a more deserving candidate than Dhyan Chand to win India’s top civilian honour. “Dhyan Chand played at a time when hockey was not even a competitive sport. He played for British India and the Union Jack would go up at medal ceremonies. There is no denying Dhayan Chand’s calibre as a player but Balbir’s goals came against teams that had quality players. Also, he played for independent India,” argues Prof Singh.
Indeed, the debate about their competitive merit is an endless one. Dhyan Chand had mesmerising stickwork—the one undisputed ‘wizard’ in hockey history, one whose feats in the 1936 Berlin Olympics (India beat Germany 8-1 in the final) deflated the Nazi theory of ‘Aryan superiority’ as much as did Jesse Owens’s dominance in athletics. Balbir, with miraculous, unequalled situational awareness on a hockey field, was a great centre forward (‘the greatest’, according to experts) and goal-scorer whose rapier passes wreaked havoc amongst opposition defences. Equally unparalleled was his marshalling of the team on the field.
The issue of the Bharat Ratna has justifiably caused heartburn in Dhyan Chand’s family. “You will not understand the pain it creates every time I am asked this. It seems I am complaining,” says the maestro’s son Ashok Kumar, who played in three World Cups and the Munich Olympics in 1972. To “dispose of a three-time Olympic champion like Balbir Singh with just a Padma Shri is gross injustice,” he says, “when sportspersons get major awards by winning an Asian-level medal or an Olympic bronze. The qualifying standards have gone down. Why deny Balbir Singh of at least a Padma Bhushan?”
Receiving the Dhyan Chand Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014
Dhyan Chand has the National Stadium in Delhi named after him. The national sports day is also dedicated to him, and a postage stamp was released in his honour. “From outside, it looks all very good, but do people know that Dhyan Chand was fighting a battle to keep his family alive? For 50 years, he was away from his family, following orders and playing hockey. But the returns were poor. He scolded us for playing hockey, saying the game will never give us a future,” says Ashok Kumar.
Saying his ‘upright’ father was the quintessential army man, Ashok Kumar said Dhyan Chand would never ‘beg’ for anything. In 1976-77, Ashok Kumar had drafted an application for a gas agency but Dhyan Chand refused to sign, saying, “I played whenever I was asked. Now it’s the turn of the government to give me shelter, food, water and electricity.” Dhyan Chand died in Jhansi in 1979.
To say that both Balbir and Dhyan Chand have felt ignored by the authorities is probably an understatement. Two former national captains, Gurbux Singh and Pargat Singh, feel that to single out one player as the ‘greatest’ is always a fraught exercise. Pargat says Dhyan Chand became famous and popular because he was the “talk of the system” and given the status of a celebrity, while Balbir was barely discussed. “To the hockey community, both Dhyan Chand and Balbir are equally important. You can’t compare them.”
Part of the 1964 gold-winning Tokyo Olympics team and captain of the 1968 Mexico squad, Gurbux Singh, now 84, agrees with Pargat. As one who played against both Dhyan Chand and Balbir, Gurbux says no player is complete without the support of his teammates. “For us, not just Balbir, but K.D. Singh Babu, Udham Singh, Keshav Datt and Leslie Claudius were heroes. To say someone is the greatest in a team sport is being foolish. Balbir was a great scorer for sure, but without Udham or Bhola or KD alongside him, he would be nothing,” he explains.
Men like Dhyan Chand and Balbir Singh Senior—proud men who served their country’s banner with excellence, heedless of material gain—will continue to leave sports fans in awe of their achievements. Discussing these two hockey legends in the light of the Bharat Ratna can only be part of a movement to restore Indian hockey to the apex of the nation’s sporting consciousness.
Outlook India
New Zealand's Hockey Foundation calls on Associations for innovative projects
The Hockey Foundation wants to help get Hockey communities back up and running by supporting fun assessable projects/programmes for the remainder of the season.
We believe it is vital the sport gets as much exposure and giving players/coaches/officials as many opportunities as possible to be involved over the next few months to see our sport continue to grow in the communities!
HOCKEY FOUNDATION COMMUNITY GRANTS
Emily Gaddum the Executive Officer of the Hockey Foundation states “Our goal as the Hockey Foundation is to support our Hockey Associations with projects/programmes over the next six months to help give players, coaches and officials opportunities to get involved in the sport we are passionate about by making it fun, accessible and cost-effective”.
“We believe each Association knows best what their needs are during this time so we want to help support you where we can”.
“Whether it’s hosting a holiday programme, a coach development programme or umpiring workshops we want to see our Associations offering all of these opportunities to players at the grass-root level all around the country. We believe now is the time to get as many players back into hockey”.
HOCKEY FOUNDATION SCHOLARSHIPS
Our two exciting Hockey Foundation scholarships are now open and ready to support young players in New Zealand. Applications for both the Chica Gilmer Scholarship and Alan Lints Senior scholarship close on Friday the 26th June.
Chica Gilmer Scholarship – U19 Female player or umpire
Can be used for educational purposes to help relieve financial pressure and give them more opportunities to help pursue hockey.
Alan Lints Senior Scholarship – U19 Male umpire
Can be used for educational purposes to help relieve financial pressure and give them more opportunities to help pursue hockey.
www.hockeyfoundationnz.co.nz
Hockey New Zealand Media release
Game-changing Gen 2 leads the way in multi-sport synthetic surfaces fit for hockey
While thousands of hockey clubs and sporting facilities around the world are fortunate enough to have synthetic turf surfaces dedicated almost solely to the purpose of playing hockey, there are many places where that simply isn’t possible.
This is a challenge frequently faced by schools and community sports centres, where the necessity to cater for numerous different sports and leisure activities is very much at the centre of any decision-making process regarding the potential creation or renewal of a synthetic surface.
Often, the attraction of long pile 3G pitches – which have proven very popular with football – is too great to resist. However, these surfaces are generally considered to be not entirely suitable for various sports, including hockey, and the installation of a 3G surface often results in teams and clubs being forced to look elsewhere for a place to play.
Thankfully, a game-changing development means that there is a versatile, hockey-friendly alternative available. A pioneering joint initiative between the sports of hockey, tennis and netball has led to the creation of an innovative new multi-sport concept known as ‘Gen 2’. Utilising the proven technology of short-pile synthetic turf preferred by hockey, and incorporating the latest innovations in shockpads, this surface has been specially designed to become a great all-round solution, not just for the three sports previously mentioned, but also others like lacrosse, futsal, softball, korfball and so much more.
“The development of the Gen 2 surface is a real collaborative effort, with the International Tennis Federation (ITF), the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) and England Netball working closely with the FIH, England Hockey and the European Hockey Federation towards a goal that is mutually beneficial”, said FIH Facilities & Quality Programme Manager Alastair Cox. “Huge efforts have been made by all parties to ensure that the surface meets the performance and durability levels required and expected by all three sports, enabling the creation of a high quality, versatile solution that is a great choice for multi-sport use.”
In terms of both sustainability and the long-term success of what is a significant financial investment, the attractiveness of multi-sport fields and courts for community and school sports facilities is clear for all to see. Quite often, the need to cater for as many people within their local area as possible is a pre-requisite when it comes to securing investment from local or national authorities. Therefore, increasing the number of sports that can be played on the field directly increases the number of people who will benefit from its installation.
Whilst the Gen 2 surface allows for the sporting opportunities to be maximised, there has been little compromise in terms of performance, being given the seal of approval by governing bodies representing the sports of hockey, tennis and netball. Gen 2 surfaces comply with the FIH Hockey Turf and Field Standards, while the testing of elements such as bounce, slip, rotational resistance and pace ensure that the performance and quality standards required for community tennis and netball are attained; allowing the three sports to work together to create the opportunity to have additional community and school playing areas. 
In partnership with England Hockey, England Netball and the Lawn Tennis Association, and endorsed by the European Hockey Federation, the International Tennis Federation and Sport England, the FIH has produced a guide that shares the Gen 2 design concepts, promotes good practice and encourages the development of facilities that all of the sports can benefit from.
If you would like to learn more about the benefits of Gen 2 fields and courts and this exciting collaboration between Hockey, Tennis and Netball, you can download the guide by clicking here.
To learn more about the FIH Quality Programme for Hockey Turf, which includes a list of all FIH approved hockey surface manufacturers, please click here.
FIH site