NEW DELHI, January 23: In the superhit Bollywood movie, Chak De! India , the Indian women's hockey team goes on to win the World Cup. Now, here's a reality check.
Members of the real national women's team, who recently returned from a tour of Australia, were forced to buy equipment out of their own money even as a Rs 5 lakh sports ministry grant for the purpose lay unused, with not one member of the team being told that such a fund existed.
The team members, who couldn't buy the kind of equipment they should be using at the international level because they didn't have enough money, were shocked when they landed at the sports ministry secretariat to receive individual cash awards.
There, the executive director of teams (SAI), Premchand Kashyap, asked the Indian Women's Hockey Federation secretary, Amrit Bose, in the presence of the team, whether the Rs 5 lakh was spent on the girls for their equipment.
The girls were shell-shocked. Had they known of this dedicated fund, they could have used it for buying equipment of international standard in Australia, the world leader in hockey equipment.
The players said they were even more surprised when Bose answered in the affirmative to Kashyap's question. The money had been "spent", she said. Bose later told TOI that the federation did received the grant but there was no need to spend the entire amount on equipment.
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