• And Mohammad Shahid was one of the finest forwards ever.

We scored the first goal. It was a penalty stroke by Zafar Iqbal. And then the whole team collapsed. One after another seven goals were scored. Overnight everything was lost.

• Zafar Iqbal actually figures in Chak De India. People only saw the image of you at the goalpost, helpless as seven goals were scored.

After the game, when I saw the footage, I saw the camera going from one direction to the other and maybe there was some editing problem but it showed me in very bad light . . . as if I had left the goalpost and run away.

• The impression was that you were charging too early.

No, they didn’t show me at the goalpost at all. People thought maybe I got scared and left my post. The next day there was talk that I had taken money from Pakistan, that I’d been seen going to the Pakistan High Commission, that somebody saw me coming down the steps of the Pakistan High Commission. So many things were said about me. A Hindi poet wrote a satire about me, there were cartoons about me.

• (Pointing to a newspaper clipping in Negi’s file) What does this say?

It says ‘Bharatiya hockey bik gaya. (Indian hockey has sold out).’

• Suggesting that you had sold out.

The Hindi poet Om Prakash Aaditya wrote this poem about me. (Points to a caricature with the poem, showing a bald Negi) At that time I wasn’t bald.

... contd.