BHOPAL: At a time when Madhya Pradesh has announced adding hockey to the school curriculum, a bunch of promising players is being trained on the footpaths of Indore in the absence of a hockey ground.
The 125-plus boys and girls practise on the footpaths outside the District Jail and Daly College and are being trained by goalkeeper-turned-coach Mir Ranjan Negi, who inspired the making of Shahrukh Khan-starrer ‘Chak De’ in 2007.
Negi, who belongs to Indore, was part of a coaching team that guided Dhanraj Pillay-led team to Asian Games title triumph in 1998 and also guided the Indian Eves to the Commonwealth Games title in 2002.
Post retirement, Negi moved to Indore from Mumbai a year back. He has been coaching the young talents associated with Prakash Club. The club is a sort of alma mater for him as he began his hockey career with it decades back.
Negi is not the only star to have been associated with the 80-year-old club. There were two others: Kishan Lal and Shankar Lakshman. Lal captained independent India’s first national team to the Olympic title triumph in 1948.
Lakshman was the first goalkeeper to lead any international hockey team and was part of Indian gold medal-winning squads at the 1956 and 1964 Olympics. Both were Padma Shri recipients.
“A sprawling unused ground in Azad Nagar area has been the Club’s base since 1940. But in 2017, the Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) built a sewage treatment plant and promised to come up with a mini stadium on the remaining portion. But the work remains incomplete,” says Devki Nandan Silawat, the Club’s secretary.
“We’re ready to pay for the remaining portion of the ground if the authorities decide to hand it to us. But our requests have fallen on deaf ears,” says Devki.
“Indore’s two hockey clubs are in bad shape. The authorities instead of helping us have deprived us of even one grassy ground,” says Negi.
When contacted by this newspaper, Indore Municipal Commissioner Pratibha Pal said the work on mini stadium was halted due to monsoon.
“It will begin soon”. Sources in the Madhya Pradesh Sports Department, meanwhile, said that the long awaited astroturf would be laid in Indore’s Bijalpur area within next 18 months. Earlier, the turf was proposed to come up at Prakash Hockey Club’s ground in the city, but the developers found the space there inadequate for the project.