If the Sports Department of Punjab’s plans are to take shape, the State will soon have about 40 Six-a-Side synthetic turfs. Speaking to s2h, ace hockey player Pargat Singh, who is Director of Sports, Government of Punjab, said his department is working on laying these many turfs in the identified hockey pockets of the State to give the players of different age groups a feel of the synthetic playing surface.

“This is just a logical extension of our proposal to promote hockey at grass root level. We have nearly 40 pockets where currently young boys and girls have been encouraged to take up the game. They all play in the week ends. We have provided them with equipment. They have to move to big towns like Jalandhar, Amritsar or Ludhiana to get the access to turf grounds. With the type of budgets at our disposal, we will never be able to lay many full length turfs. So we thought why not shorter ones at these pockets so that our wards can get to play on the turfs quite often and also near their locality”.

It is worthwhile to mention here that hardly about 300 boys and girls were in the sports wings of the Sports Department in Punjab, but thankfully the level has been raised to ten times since Pargat Singh took over the top chair in the department two years ago. Not to be content with, he has been making efforts to further broaden the hockey base.

“We work on long term plan, and concentrate on juniors. We also ensure strict age regulations. For an instance, we take players up to the age of 13 for the 12-14 age group to accommodate and trade off errors”.

Pargat also has plans to acquire more coaches and for that outsourcing tool has come as a good relief. Tenders are being issued to interested organizations to supply coaches under their umbrella on contract basis. “Our aim is to have adequate number of coaches, who can mould the players at these pockets. We want same system of game is imparted at all levels and for that coaches will have to partake in clinics and seminars. We are also in the process of writing to the FIH for acquiring coaches / trainers, say like Tayyab Ikram, to bring uniformity in coaching and training”.

“Many of our plans are taking shape. May be in the near future, not just in a year or two, Punjab may be able to provide half a dozen players to the nationals teams”, he opines.