Tibits here and there: Hockey player makes bhojpuri film
After the last match is over in the stadium, Astro (the television channel telecasting the matches in Malaysia) films a 30 minute episode daily on the ground, with lot of lighting and more than one camera. Its almost a chat show type, with former Malaysian great Mirnawan Nawami, cetnre-forward, as the expert. The conversation is in Malay, not much could be made out as to the content.
==========================
This former player from Singapore often goes a remote town, 40 km away from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. And a group is shortly going to come to his country. What teng Kwang Siang is upto. The Chinese, whose association with hockey is well over four decade as player and club manager, is producing a Bhojpuri film, Chunnu Babu Singapori. Why of all the things a Bhojpuri film? “its urge to do something different. My friend Pandey is acting, we got a heroine from Bollywood, almost 70 percent shooting is over. What remains now is the troup’s visit to Singapore where we intend to shoot for a fortnight. The film is likely to be released by August.
==========================
This writer was embarrassed recently when Dharmaraj, younger brother of famous Malaysian defender Embaraj, who is the Junior India coach. Do we have anyone in India? At least we don’t know officially anything.
==========================
No hockey tournament ever takes place without some hockey fans from UK in the stadium. Here we have some, one of them is Asghar Khan, who has witnessed all Olympic hockey starting from 1972. I saw almost all major hockey tournaments in the world, except Asia Cup and Azlan Shah. Now I can remove Azlan Shah from that list”, he says. The family of this African immigrant to England, moved from undivided India.
==========================
Media presence this year is more than last year. This year at least four journalists are here from India, one newspaper, one agency and one website. If this is better, then what to say? There are 4, 5 journos from Pakistan including veteran Zakir Saheb. Experienced Zakhir is worried on the poor quality of umpiring here.
==========================
Like we have Azlan Shah every year, Malaysia will have another annual feature from this year November. It is for Juniors, will be known as Sultan Ibrahim Cup, will be held in Johor Bahru, joint host city of last Junior World Cup. India has confirmed its participation along with six other nations.
==========================
For the first time, a stall was put up to sell Azlan Shah Tournament souvenirs, a good relief indeed, the question of what to present to my One Thousand Hockey Legs coaches is solved. Key chains, umbrella, mugs are the major items.
==========================
One may wonder why a big tournament like Azlan Shah attracts very few foreign journalist, but however media seems to be not in the priority of the organizers. There are too many irritants start coming up in doing your job, which is an unlikely situation so far. What I mean is where to go, where not, what to do, what not type of things.
==========================
The other day official dinner was hosted in a local golf club. Media not invited, they were disposed of one day earlier with a lunch. Pak had to advance their practice by three hours to enable to be in the event. When the welcome dinner was hosted on 4th May, entire Pak team entered almost at the close of the dinner time, and straight away from the ground.