Sports field near every house, rewarding achievers & inclusivity: How Punjab's sports policy helps sustain success on stages big & small

Punjab has produced numerous sporting legends and it all comes down to the culture promoted at the grassroots. Hockey is one of the sports that resonates with the youth across the state, but recent years have seen athletes from other varied sports shine at the world stage as well.

That begs the question: What is it about the sporting culture that produces world beaters? Well, for starters, it’s the tried-and-tested sporting policy of the state.

Updated in July 2023, Punjab’s “New Sports Policy 2023” is testament to the state’s commitment to support their athletes. With renewed focus on ensuring a sporting facility in every nook and cranny and rewarding achievers, the state continues to push towards ensuring their athletes are well taken care of.

One of the key highlights of the new policy was a clause suggesting that a playground be ensured within a 4-km distance from every house in the state. Ambitious as it sounds, the idea is essentially the first towards piquing the interest of the youth.

With 1,600 sporting fields, 54 Multipurpose outdoor stadiums and indoor halls, 26 hockey astro turfs, six athletic tracks and five shooting ranges, the infrastructure supports the ever-developing needs of the sporting fraternity.

Punjab has proud one of India's finest drag-flick specialists in recent times in the form of Gurjit Kaur.

And then there’s the support that the state government offers to other sporting facilities like the Surjit Hockey Stadium, run by the namesake foundation in Jalandhar. Dubbed the “nursery” for hockey players, it boasts of players like Manpreet Singh and Varun Kumar in the current squad.

Gurjit Kaur, the ace drag-flick specialist for the women’s side comes from another grassroot academy in Kairon, Tarn Taran.

A push to have the same penetrate further into the areas of untapped potential with the aforementioned goal of setting up more sporting fields across the state, the talent is bound to grow.

Addressing the push at the time, Punjab sports minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer had told mediapersons:

“1,000 cluster-level sports nurseries with coaching, sports equipment and refreshments will be established. At ₹25 lakh per nursery, it will have a total budget of ₹250 crore. A district-level sports structure with 200 sports hostels in each district is to be established to prepare sportspersons for national-level competitions."

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Punjab, rewarding it’s world-beaters

Harjinder Kaur had bagged a bronze medal in weightlifting at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Punjab sports minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer had also taken note of rewarding the achievers that have already done the state proud while announcing the new sports policy.

The upgraded cash prizes of ₹3 crore, ₹2 crore and ₹1 crore for gold, silver and bronze medallist at the Olympics Games respectively was the key attention-grabber, but the addition of several other awards underlines the importance of starting from ground-up.

The addition of 55 new cash prizes (up from 25 to 80) covering Special Olympics winners and para-athletes also highlighted inclusivity, as did the introduction of the Milkha Singh Award for those promoting sports and Balbir Singh Senior Scholarship Scheme for national-level medal winners.

The commitment to follow through on the promise came to fore earlier this year when the state government announced a sum of ₹4.64 crore being earmarked to award the 48 players from the state who participated in the Asian Games in Hangzhou.

The support translated into medals as Punjab had it's best-ever showing at the Asian Games, winning 19 medals, nearly 20% of India's total 107. It was also a significant improvement on its previous-best showing of 15 from the inaugural Asian Games held in New Delhi all the way back in 1951.

Similarly, Punjab had contributed with an impressive 18 for India at the Commonwealth Games held in Birmingham last year, when India had finished fourth with a tally of 66 medals.

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Looking far and beyond

The support is not limited to the mainstream sports, which have a a major platform to showcase their skills at the state government's Khedan Watan Punjab Dia, which hosts block, district and state-level games on a mssice scale. Athletes competing in the Special Olympics and Para-sports, however, also find regular camps and training workshops to hone the skills.

Hayer, for one, was the first to call on seven stars from the Special Olympics World Summer Games held in Berlin this year. The players, and their coaches were felicitated at an event in Chandigarh.

Palak Kohli has bagged medals at the para-badminton events on the international stage.

Baseball and softball, sports that are unheard in most parts of the country, finds resonance in Ludhiana — a city that not only boasts of the infrastructure to support these players, but also hosts school and district-level tournaments regularly to help them hone their skills by way of competing.

The result? The women’s team representing the Punjab Baseball Association lifted the trophy at the 36th Senior National Baseball Championship earlier last month.

The state continues to do relatively well at the National Games, but it is the identification of their sporting heroes and providing them the platform to further their skills that takes the state far.

Case in point: Having sensed the potential of their basketball teams, which had been winning medals on the national stage, Punjab decided to host the National Championships in Ludhiana this year.

The city is abuzz with enthusiasm and fans pour in to cheer for their sides. Unsurprisingly the women’s team posted a hard-fought victory against Maharashtra on Monday. More than the win, it was the cheers from a electric home crowd that brought a smile onto the players’ exhausted faces by the end.