Top players allege discrimination
Top players allege discrimination |
| Biting the bullet: Gagan Narang's selection for the Games has come under criticism from fellow shooters. Pic/mid day |
Foul is fair at the Commonwealth Games; at least that seems to be the case. Poor infrastructure, missed deadlines, rampant corruption - all this is old news, and more importantly it had little to do with the athletes or sports. That has changed now.
Top shooters of the country have alleged discrimination and foul play in team selected for CWG by the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI). The charge: top players have been sacrificed to include those who did not even take part in the trials which were mandatory according to the NRAI's own regulations (displayed on its website).
Fingers are pointing at Gagan Narang, one of the country's leading shooters himself. Narang had not taken part in the selection trials for the rifle prone and rifle 3 categories but he participated in trials for 10m air rifle event held in June, which was mandatory for selection to CWG and also the Asian Games. Despite that, he has been included in all three groups.
NRAI officials say he has been exempted on the basis of his performance in the World Championships. But by doing that, they have overruled their own selection criteria.
According to the NRAI website: "To select the team for the Commonwealth Games 2010 and the Asian Games 2010, the following procedure shall be followed by the designated selection committee of the NRAI. To ascertain the mathematical merit of a shooter's performance, where he or she has shot the World Championship, the average of his June trial score (first score) shall be added to his rendered second score (WC score) & the sum shall be divided by the digit 2.
To ascertain the mathematical merit of a shooter's performance, where he or she has not shot the World Championship, the average of his June trial score (first score) shall be added to his rendered second score (August trial) & the sum shall be divided by the digit 2." "Those who were not selected will obviously cry foul. We are not taking any Tom, Dick or Harry. Do you want us to lose medals?" said NRAI secretary Rajiv Bhatia.
But those the federation chooses to call Tom, Dick or Harry have proved their worth and performed consistently both at selection trials and World Championships. "I would have been happy if my recent efforts, which include a score of 599/600 in April, were given value. And I would have been happier if I had some support or exemption when I broke my rifle four days before the main trials. I chose to fight out the trials in spite of all odds. I shot the trials with a borough rifle only to know afterwards that the selection could have been based only on a single World Championship score," said Joydeep Karmakar (current world no. 16)u00a0 "But one of my friends opted out and still qualified," he added.
"For someone, one score has become so important that consistent scores by others are overlooked. Some people have qualified without participating in the trial and having a base score," said Sanjeev Rajput, who won an individual gold medal in the Commonwealth championship last February with a tournament record. Gagan Narang refused to comment on the issue. "I want to concentrate on my game," he said.u00a0
GUNNING FOR GLORY
Men's rifle:u00a0 Abhinav Bindra, Hariom Singh, Gagan Narang, Imran Hassan Khan
Men's pistol: Deepak Sharma, Omkar Singh, Vijay Kumar, Gurpreet Singh, Samaresh Jung, C K Chaudhary, Harpreet Singh
Men's shotgun: Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Mansher Singh, Mairaj Ahmad Khan, A D Peoples, Ronjon Sodhi, Asher Noria
Women's rifle: Suma Shirur, Kavitha Yadav, Meena Kumari, Tejaswini Sawant, Lajja Gauswami
Women's pistol: Anisa Sayyed, Rahi Sarnobat, Heena Sidhu, Annuraj Singh
Women's shotgun: Seema Tomar, Shreyasi Singh
