Hockey India seeks Action against Pakistani Players

The Pakistani Hockey players, who celebrated wildly following the semifinal win over India and hurled obscene gestures at the media and crowd, may face further action despite the decision of Wiert Doyer, tournament director of the Hero Hockey Champions Trophy to let them go unpunished.

Wiert Doyer felt that no action against the players is warranted after their coach Shahnaz Sheikh apologised to the organisers personally and tendered an apology at the press conference. However, the International Hockey Federation (FIH) is reportedly not convinced and wants such things to be prevented, which could also trigger security concerns while killing the spirit of the game.

Hockey India (HI) President, Narinder Batra slammed the Pakistani team for their indecent behavior and warned that India won’t be interested to host any world class tournament if such things go unpunished.

“I am instructing my CEO to inform FIH that in case this kind of behaviour by teams is within normal and tolerable limits of FIH, then we may not be interested to host any more tournaments in India and the tournaments may be shifted to countries which tolerate this kind of nonsense and uncouth behaviour,” Batra wrote on his Facebook post. Batra also ruled out any friendly series with Pakistan until their federation issues an unconditional apology.

After their 4-3 win over India, Pakistani players took off their shirts and ran towards the stands and Indian players. They abused and passed lewd remarks, including giving them a ‘finger salute’. Their targets were Indian players, media and the crowd.