6

Mar

Overseas Punjabis  reviving sports in Punjab

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Today’s Edition

New Delhi, 6 March 2024

Prabhjot Singh

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 Will Punjab regain its position as a sports arm of the country?

“Sure, why not? Let us pool our resources, share our expertise, and work collectively to restore the glory the State once enjoyed, both in national and international sports circuits.”

This unanimity marked the first-ever Sports Conclave organized by the country’s leading sports publication, Sport Star.

The day-long conclave that started with the conferring of lifetime achievement award upon Olympian and 1975 World Cup champion team member Brig Harcharan Singh also witnessed deliberations involving some top stars, both present and of yesteryears, on how the State that continued to dominate the national and international sports scene for almost four decades after the unfortunate 1947 partition can regain its supremacy.

Among the participants were Brig Harcharan Singh, Rajinder Singh Senior, Sarpal Singh, Avneet Sidhu, and Anjum Moudgill besides DR Amit Bhattacharya, Vijay Sharma, John Gloster, and Punjab Sports Secretary Sarvjit Singh.

The most redeeming feature of the convention was the revelations made by both Sarpal Singh and Olympian Rajinder Singh Senior. They disclosed that they were making huge investments in developing the sports infrastructure. Work on the 10,000-bedded sports hostel started this morning. The 250-acre complex coming up in Mullanpur (New Chandigarh) will have 10 football fields, four hockey fields and 16 tennis courts.

Facilities for other sports, including shooting and golf may be added later on. At present, the Roundglass Foundation has a football team playing in the national league and several hundred boys and girls training at 18 hockey centres in Punjab. Two of these centres were exclusively for girls.

Rajinder Singh Senior was heading the hockey cell with 18 coaches.

Sarpal Singh offered full cooperation to the Punjab Government in supplementing and complementing infrastructure by his NGO and the Government for the betterment of sports. "We are ready to extend full cooperation. Next month, my son, Sunny Singh, who is the brain behind the Roundglass Foundation, will visit Punjab to see how well Punjab's progress in sports can be taken forward," Sarpal Singh, who missed playing in the Olympics for India in hockey, said. Sarpal Singh had been a contemporary of Olympian Balkishen Singh and played for Railways for more than 30 years. He later represented India in Golf also.

There were some anxious moments when attention shifted to individual sports as some of the participants wanted to know what the medal prospects in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games are.

The convention marked a clear unanimity that sports needed coordinated effort not only among athletes, their parents, and coaches but also between the sports medicine experts.

As a part of the convention was a special session on cricket that featured former Test cricketer Gursharan Singh and national selector Bhupinder Singh Senior besides the Punjab Cricket Association President A. S. Mehta.

Some senior journalists of the Hindu group, including Rakesh Rao and Vijay Lokpally, besides the Editor of Sport Star, Ayon Sengupta, joined the deliberations.

Most of the panellists agreed that cash incentives and awards were alright but the certainty of a job to a sportsman of a certain level would be a big boost in promoting the sports at the grassroots level.

Caption: Sarpal Singh (Roundglass Foundation) and Olympian Rajinder Singh Senior at the Sports Star convention in Chandigarh on Wednesday. (Words 585)

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