Indian cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar’s organization “The CHAMPS Foundation” have come to the aid of ailing hockey Olympian Mohinder Pal Singh, also known as MP Singh.
The 58-year-old former hockey player has been suffering from kidney ailment and is on dialysis waiting for a donor for transplant for which he has been given assistance by former Indian skipper’s foundation.
He was an integral part of the Indian hockey team during the 1988 Seoul Olympics and played alongside the likes of Mohammed Shahid, MM Somaya, Jude Felix, and Pargat Singh.
The CHAMPS Foundation (Caring, Helping, Assisting, Motivating, Promoting Sportspersons) has been helping a lot of sports personalities under financial distress for more than two decades.
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On being asked about the idea to set-up the foundation, Gavaskar told PTI: “I had been reading in the media about the hard times that our earlier Olympians and (international) medalists were facing in their later years. The information about Shri MP Singh’s health also came about thanks to the print media.”
The legendary batsman further revealed that there wasn’t any specific organization to help former athletes who have given their all for the nation that inspired him to set-up the foundation.
He further explained, “Since there are many Foundations for Education, Health, Child and Senior citizens and such but none for former international sportspersons, I thought of setting up a Foundation with a personal contribution. We then organized a double-wicket tournament with the members of the 1983 World Cup team and it was being partnered by an industrialist or a corporate head with their companies making a donation to the corpus of the fund.”
Gavaskar’s foundation has so far helped 21 former players with monthly assistance as well as by taking care of their medical expenses. However, the Little master said the foundation helps only after checking the credibility of people seeking financial assistance, adding: “the Foundation has friends who do the background check after which the decision to assist or not is taken.”
He signed off by saying, “We would like to help more but we get to know about an international who is struggling to make ends meet only when the media does a story. We can be contacted via email on info@champsindia.org or https://champsindia.org,””
(With PTI Inputs)
