Sunday promised two high-profile clashes featuring India and Pakistan – the 2017 Champions Trophy final at the Kennington Oval in London and another equally important Hockey World League (HWL) semifinal match.
It was reported that the Sports Ministry had installed giant LED screens at the Major Dhyanchand National Stadium for public viewing of the Champions Trophy final. The Sports Ministry had reportedly spent Rs 3.5 lakh on advertising for the event with Sports Minister Vijay Goel inaugurating “the mega LED screens at the National Stadium”.
The Ministry paid Rs 30,000 as rent for the screens on the match days while a caterer from the Chandni Chowk area, Goel’s parliamentary constituency, was being used to serve chargeable local delicacies to the viewers. The Sports Minister even went on twitter to promote the event.
The decision to screen the Champions Trophy final at a hockey stadium did not go down well with former hockey players with Ashok Kumar, Dhyanchand’s son, opining, “I am feeling really sad about it. The stadium is named after my father and the Ministry is showing cricket there. This is unacceptable. This shows how much they care about the game of hockey.
“For them, cricket is a priority when the BCCI doesn’t even care about their policies. They could have chosen the central park at the Connaught Place or the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium if the idea was really to involve the public.”
Also read: HWL Semifinals 2017: India record biggest-ever win against Pakistan, create history
Former players weren’t the only ones who did not like the Sports Ministers decision. Fans of hockey also voiced their opinion on twitter. One hockey fan page called ‘Give Me Hockey’ took issue with the Sports Ministers tweet and took it as undermining the importance of hockey.
Vijay Goel replied with a tweet showing how the screens at the Dhyanchand Stadium had been used to show the India vs Canada match that had happened the day before. Not satisfied, Give Me Hockey insisted that since the India-Pakistan hockey game was today and it clashed with the Champions Trophy final, hockey should have been given the preference over cricket.
What followed was a string of tweets by the Sports minister of the country attacking the Hockey fan page. He seemed to be irritated at the questioning and told the GMH page to “shut up” about it.
When the group asked to see evidence of the hockey match being screened, Goel resorted to abuse by calling the group “Faceless Trolls” and defiantly claimed that he didn’t owe any explanations to anyone.
The Twitter battle finally ended with Goel tweeting a picture of the India-Pakistan game being screened at the Major Dhyanchand National Stadium.
Many have wondered why the Ministry has chosen to put so much effort into a cricket final when the BCCI (the cricket’s governing body in the country) considers itself to be a private body. So it was shocking to see Vijay Goel lose his composure on Twitter, when a passionate sports page merely questioned the decision to screen a cricket match over a hockey match at a hockey stadium.
This isn’t the kind of behaviour that is expected of someone that is supposed to be the Sports Minister of our country.
