Rourkela: Vice President Hamid Ansari on Saturday declared open the inaugural Biju Patnaik rural hockey championship here involving a whopping 1,458 teams and nearly 16,000 players from the rural belts of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
Conceptualised by Padma Shree and Rajya Sabha member Dilip Tirkey — India’s most-capped hockey international with 403 internationals — organisers claimed that it was the largest hockey tournament in terms of participation across the globe. It certainly made for a spectacular sight as they filled up the main hockey pitch at the Biju Patnaik Stadium on Saturday morning.
“It is not just the record that we are aiming at. Youth in this part of the country sometimes pick up guns at an early age,” Tirkey said, referring to the Maoist unrest in the region. If we can teach them to choose sticks instead and provide them with facilities, which villages and smaller areas don’t have, we believe we can shape a better future. Sport can become a vehicle of change.
Much like Tirkey, there have been several well-known names from the region — Michael Kindo, Lazarus Barla, Ignace Tirkey, Prabodh Tirkey and current player Birender Lakra. Not to forget the captain of India’s first-ever Olympic gold medal winning hockey team, Jaipal Singh Munda, who was also from the region.
