National basketball championships: Railways makes a last-minute entrance

January 07, 2017 02:33 am | Updated 02:53 am IST - PUDUCHERRY:

Honing their skills: Chhattisgarh players practising at the Rajiv Gandhi indoor stadium on the eve of 67th senior National basketball championship.

Honing their skills: Chhattisgarh players practising at the Rajiv Gandhi indoor stadium on the eve of 67th senior National basketball championship.

For the first time in several decades, the senior National basketball championships to be held here from January 7 to 14 will be without the Services men’s team, which has won the title a whopping 29 times.

On the other hand, the Indian Railways teams (men & women) will take part in the Nationals. The decision was taken by the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) late on Friday.

BFI secretary Chander Mukhi Sharma took the call after reading the explanatory mail sent by the Railways Sports Promotion Board (RSPB).

“We had been in touch with the BFI. We did raise a lot of issues. The BFI has been gracious in allowing us to participate. We are very happy,” RSPB secretary Rekha Yadav told The Hindu .

Even a couple of days back, BFI had requested the respective Sports Promotion Boards of Services and Railways to release the players for the senior Nationals provided they agree to pay the affiliation fees (with penalty & arrears) to BFI after the Government of India recognises it and assure BFI that they would not take part in prize money tournaments not recognised by BFI, among other things.

Railways sources said there had been a miscommunication with BFI as the latter had not seen the reply sent to the president’s (BFI) personal mail.

By that extension, Services, too, should be allowed to take part. However, Sharma said to The Hindu, “Services has not addressed the issues which we wanted them to.”

With funds from IMG Reliance not forthcoming since 2015, the Managing Director of Arise Steel, Aadhav Arjuna, who was roped in as the chairman of Pondicherry Basketball Association last year, has come forward to sponsor the tournament, much to the relief of BFI.

With fog affecting several parts of Northern India, teams such as Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, UP, Haryana & Himachal Pradesh (all men & women), Uttarakhand (women) will be arriving (by train) in Chennai only on Saturday morning.

The future of some of the banned players, who took part in the “unauthorised” third edition of the UBA pro basketball league is likely to be discussed at the BFI AGM on January 14.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.