I want players to play for country: Sports Minister

May 27, 2011 |

New Delhi

Tags:

With star cricketer Gautam Gambhir's shoulder injury raking up a country vs club debate, Sports Minister Ajay Maken on Friday said every sportsperson should first honour their national commitments.

Although he tried to evade a direct reply when asked about Gambhir's decision to play for his IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders despite a shoulder injury, which eventually ruled him out for the entire tour of West Indies, Maken hinted that for any sportsperson country should come first.

"I would like to keep myself out of this controversy but as a minister I would like everyone to play for the country first," Maken said.

Gambhir has stirred the country versus club debate when he captained Kolkata Knight Riders against Mumbai Indians in the IPL eliminator on Wednesday despite suffering from a chronic shoulder injury.

The incident took an ugly turn a day later when KKR physio Andrew Leipus, in his report to BCCI, stated that the left-hander needs complete rest for four to six weeks to recover from injury.

Subsequently, he was today ruled out for the entire tour of the West Indies and in his place Suresh Raina has been named captain while Harbhajan Singh will be his deputy.

If the shoulder injury was not enough, Gambhir courted another controversy when Leipus, in his report to BCCI, stated that the player had used ‘corticosteroid injections’ earlier for his recurring shoulder injury.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/76217" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-bce6940ab173a6eb89665648d15701e9" value="form-bce6940ab173a6eb89665648d15701e9" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="83057160" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>