What a mess! During the last 6 months there have been many problems between the Indian Federation and some of its top players. Everything started to escalate when Bopanna and Bhupathi refused to team up with Paes for the last Olympic games.
Then the India Federation suspended Bhupathi and Bopanna from playing for India, now all top players (with the exception of Paes) submitted a document to the Federation with some requests. Apparently if the Federation won’t accept these demands they won’t play the Davis Cup.
The stalemate
It seems that Federation accepted most of the demands, but this didn’t convice the players and the “negotiation” stalled.
Hironmoy Chatterjee, the head of the governing body, said “We will wait for the players’ response. We won’t change our stand. Whatever was possible to be done, we have done. Now it’s upto them to send in their availability,”
The deadline
The applications have to be sent by the 10th of January. According to Chatterjee “Whoever sends in their availability by Jan. 10, we will select the team from that lot.”
“Crossing the line”
“We have done enough and now it is upto them. The problem is now they are overstepping,” Chatterjee said. “They want to be players, they want to be selectors, they want to be administrators, which is not on. Now we will need to get them back to track otherwise we will send a wrong signal to the entire sporting fraternity.
I wouldn’t like to use the term blackmailing but they are definitely crossing the line.
It’s not that India has only eight players, we have enough players to choose from and play the tie.”
Something is definitely wrong over there…Auch….
