Undercooked VHA teams face bleak future in HI nationals

By Paritosh Pramanik
March 26, 2015 
FUTURE of Vidarbha Hockey Association featuring in the forthcoming nationals look bleak given the tardy preparations by the teams and the association’s “financial crisis”.
Vidarbha will be fielding junior as well as senior teams in the Hockey India nationals scheduled next month.
The junior nationals will be held at Mysore, Karnataka from April 1. Though the association organised preparatory and conditioning camp for the juniors, it lasted for only a few days. The camp was organised at VHA’s ground from March 17 in which outstation players too participated. But to everybody’s surprise selected players from Amravati, Wardha and Chandrapur were sent back home midway without the knowledge of coach and manager.
The coach and manager of junior team, Jageshwar Kaithwas and Prashant Manwatkar are working hard on the fitness of players from Nagpur everyday but there would be hardly any co-ordination between the players as around six players have returned home.
VHA president Radheshyam Sarda said players were sent home and would return on March 28. But he failed to give any concrete reason as to why the players were sent so early.
“Outstation players were sent back on March 20, almost seven days before team’s departure for Mysore,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
Another source blamed it on the financial crisis the association is facing. “There is no money with the association. We are finding it very difficult to take the burden of lodging of outstation players.”
Sarda, however, denied this.
“It is totally baseless information. Association is financially sound and more sponsors 
are coming forward,” Sarda claimed.
If the juniors are having divided preparatory camp, the seniors are clueless about their camp.
The senior nationals are going to be held at Pune from April 6-20. VHA selected team on March 20 but no camp has been organised till date. “I have no idea about the camp. I don’t know how would we get a chance to played a combined practice match,” said one of the selected players.
The senior team has eight players from Amravati, three from Jalgaon and one from Chandrapur. Only six were selected from Nagpur who are doing a combined practice.
“Seniors’ conditioning camp will be held from March 29 to April 2,” informed Sarda.
The players will have to iron out their flaws in those five days if they dream of qualifying for the knock-outs.
It is high time VHA took serious steps to enhance the performance of its teams in nationals. At present VHA teams are lingering in ‘B’ Division in all categories.