Olympic qualifiers: Axed Rajpal cries foul

Former skippers Rajpal Singh and Arjun Halappa were on Monday excluded from the 18-member squad for next month’s Olympic qualifiers.

Goalkeeper Bharat Chetri will lead the side for the six-nation event in New Delhi from February 18 to 26. The winner of this tournament will qualify for the London Olympics in July.

Rajpal cried foul, saying his exclusion was not justified. “The trainer’s report says that I was away for 12 weeks. That’s not true. I underwent an operation for appendicitis on October 29 and was out for six weeks. After that, I started training and joined the national camp on January 8,” Rajpal told DNA.

Selector Balbir Singh said Halappa does not fit into Nobbs’s scheme of things. “The focus is on fit players who can play attacking hockey,” he said. The selector added that Rajpal had been deemed unfit by physio David John. “We had to go by the physio’s word,” Balbir added.

This paper has reliably learnt that Rajpal had gotten into an argument with the phsyio during India’s tour of Australia in October last year. When asked if the altercation resulted in his exclusion, Singh said, “These people are good at employing the divide and rule strategy. But they shouldn’t get personal when it comes to building a team.”

Singh also denied that he was excluded after failing a fitness test. “There was no fitness test conducted for me. I was once told by Nobbs that there will be a test for me, but there was nothing,” Singh said. India will take on Canada, France, Italy, Poland and Singapore.

Squad: Goalkeepers: Bharat Chetri (C), PR Sreejesh; Defenders: Sandeep Singh, VR Raghunath, Rupinderpal Singh; Midfielders: Sardara Singh (VC), Manpreet Singh, Birendra Lakra, Ignace Tirkey, Kothajit Singh; Forwards: SV Sunil, Sarvanjit Singh, Shivendra Singh, Gurvinder Singh Chandi, Tushar Khandker, Danish Mujtaba, Yuvraj Walmiki, SK Uthappa; Standbys: Manjeet Kullu, VS Vinaya, Arjun Halappa, Chinglensana Singh