New Delhi: Former players and selectors, who have been closely associated with Indian hockey for the past few years, are hardly surprised by the recent developments in the IHF.

Some of the past greats, who spoke to The Telegraph on Tuesday, said that many undeserving players got themselves selected through the back door during K.P.S. Gill and K. Jyothikumaran’s regime. According to them, the selectors could do nothing as the two IHF bosses always had the last say in the selection.

“This has been going on for a long time,” said Aslam Sher Khan, a member of the 1975 World Cup winning team and a former selector.

“It would be wrong to say that Gill was not aware of what was happening,” the last of the hockey icons from Bhopal said.

“There were several occasions when they picked hugely undeserving players. It went from bad to worse… I finally resigned from the selection committee in 2005 in disgust.

“In 2003, when the team was going to Egypt, I was amazed to see the name of a particular player in the team.

“None of us in the selection committee had picked him. Yet he boarded the flight,” Aslam said.

“A similar incident happened during the selection of the team for Athens Olympics. I protested, but in vain. Gill and Jyothikumaran never listened to me. Finally I wrote a letter to Gill and resigned as a selector. It was extremely frustrating,” Aslam added.

Another selector, who didn’t wish to be named, said he found coaches were also involved in selecting players who didn’t deserve a berth. What surprised him more was that neither Gill nor Jyothikumaran said a word against the coach.

“There was a period in 2003 and 2004 when the then national coach was selecting new players in random and dumping them after one tournament. No one asked him why he did so,” said the selector, considered one of India’s greatest players ever.

“Can anyone tell me what happened to Raju after the Champions Trophy in 2004? Or why players like Joginder Chowdhury or Shailendra got into the team for a short period and were never considered again?” the selector asked.

“It is ridiculous that Gill is now taking a high moral stand. Why didn’t he say a word when someone like Adam Sinclair was inducted into the team clearly on the instructions of the IHF secretary?” he asked.

Former India captain Gurbux Singh, who had been the national selector several times since 1973, was particularly unhappy with the way the current coach Joaquim Carvalho was handling things without taking the selectors into confidence.

“Carvalho has the blessings of Gill, so he can do anything,” said Gurbux. “He dropped Sandeep Singh and Arjun Halappa for Santiago. Gill never allowed us to sack him. Now, Carvalho has inducted eight new players in the team for the four-nation tournament in Australia.”

One selector, however, feels the national coach has taken the right decision. “Nobody in the federation had the guts to question Jyothikumaran when relatively unknown players like Senthil or Vinaya were called for the camp on the insistence of the secretary. The coach has taken the right decision,” he said.