Best way to keep a player’s memory is to make some kids play hockey. If these kids can get basic needs and competition to play around, it also adds value to hockey.

This is exactly what is happening with respect to late Vivek Singh, who untimely died seven years ago due to cancer.

Vivek Singh needs no introduction in Indian hockey. He is a gem of a player to come from the Varanasi stable, a contemporary of stylist Md. Shahid.

Both Vivek and Shahid are good friends and hail from the same city.

Vivek Singh Hockey Academy, formed by his family and friends after Vivek’s death, is a welcome step to immortalize the great player. The Academy has been running with a fair measure of progress in its stated objectives since late 2005.

Vivek Singh, a respected Centre-half, a World Cup and Olympic level player, symbolises family hockey. His father the lanky Gowri Shankar, is a professor in a local college, a hockey and badminton player himself.

His five sons are also established sports persons. Three brothers of Vivek — Prasant, Rahul Singh and Shailendra — played hockey at high level.

Rahul Singh, who married Satnam Singh, a reputed international, played in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

The centre-half family is in the centre of Vivek Singh academy with father Gowrishankar at the helm.

Gowri Shankar is president of the Academy set up, where his four brothers are vice – presidents.

On June 21, these die-hard hockey family is organizing an exhibition match in order to ‘improve national game and rural hockey’ in varanasi.

On this occasion, this writer cannot but reminise the previous occasion the Varanasi hosted a match on Vivek’s benefit.

I and my friend Shailesh Chaturvedi were invited in 2004 for the match to Varanasi. His well-wishers were then staging a benefit match for Vivek Singh, who was alive but was obviously fading.

He in fact died after a month.

The enthusiasm then was on high, with a few thousands assembled to watch Ex-Olympians, who are all either played with Vivek or his admirers, take on a local side.

The venue was Rana Pratap College grounds, where Vivek studied and played.

Me and Shailesh were specially invited from Delhi as a return gesture of we staging a Vivek Singh benefit match. This was between Indian women team which the Railway board consented to arrange, and former Olympians.

It was organized by the short-lived Hockey Journalists Association formed on the eve of the match.

This match, witnessed by four-time MP Sunil Dutt, then Sports Minister, helped us to collect about Rs. 5 lac, which we presented to Gowri Shankar, even as Vivek was undergoing treatment.

During over visit to Varanasi, Vivek certainly expressed an opinion that his memory will be best kept alive with his passion hockey getting a boost everywhere.

At it is getting a boost in Varanasi with the successful launch and conduct of an Academy in the name of the departed soul.

Pic: Then Union Sports Minister Sunil Dutt handing Over the purse collected by Hockey Journalists Association to Gowri Shankar, father of late Olympian Vivek Singh. Venue: Shivaji stadium, New Delhi, May 2004