Mithapur gives Indian hockey a legup
Punjab’s heritage in the game lives on in village home to three World Cuppers this year
MITHAPUR (JALANDHAR): There was a time when Sansarpur village in Jalandhar made its dominance felt in Indian hockey, earning global fame for producing a dozen Olympic medallists from a tiny settlement with nearby villages also benefitting from the hockey culture. The game, inherited from the British Army in the preindependence era, spread to adjoining areas and Mithapur village was one of the beneficiaries.
In the 1990s, it was Mithapur that came into focus with the emergence of Pargat Singh, who went on to lead India in two successive Olympics. Before Pargat, Sarup Singh (1952) and Kulwant Singh (1972) from the village played in the Olympics. The fame Pargat earned played a pivotal role in his becoming the first Olympian from Punjab to win a state assembly election.
Then came the lure of the foreign land, which motivated the local youth to migrate and drugs too played a role in the slow and steadily decline of hockey culture in the area. Though the migration impacted entire Punjab, Jalandhar and nearby districts, especially in rural areas, saw maximum movement. For the youth, foreign dreams took priority over everything else. The fate of Mithapur was no different.
Visit the village, which has almost merged into Jalandhar, and you can see a concrete jungle with big houses and mansions, half of which are unoccupied as their owners are settled aboard.
These empty houses played a major role in motivating generations to look to foreign shores for a better life. But thanks to the re-emergence of a hockey culture, youth in the area are giving priority to donning the national jersey again.
Mithapur has thus emerged as a hockey power again, this time stronger than before. It is evident in the composition of current Indian men’s team. Skipper Manpreet Singh as well as members of 2016 junior World Cup-winning squad Mandeep Singh and Varun Kumar hail from the village and are part of the squad that will be leading the billion plus hopes in the World Cup in Bhubaneswar starting on November 28.
“I took up the sport emulating my seniors. Hockey is very much part of our culture and daily conversation in our village. We grew up listening to the tales of Sansarpur sending a number of players to the Indian team and now we are happy our village (Mithapur) too is producing international players,” says Mandeep, 23, a regular face of the Indian team for the last one-and-a-half-years. “Hope to make India proud in the World Cup.”
Since Sansarpur’s golden era, when five players from the village were part of the Indian squad in the 1968 Olympics, it’s Mithapur that has sent the maximum number of players (three) from one village to the squad in a tournament.
“It gives me pride that these youngsters from Mithapur are taking forward the Sansarpur legacy. I can proudly say we have four players from this belt (three from Mithapur village and Hardik from Khusropur village) in the current squad,” says Col Balbir Singh, Olympic medallist from Sansarpur.
“These youngsters have given hope to many youth that you can have a better life here in your own native place because of hockey. Now the nearby villages are drawing inspiration from Mithapur’s success story. Hope to see them helping India to a podium finish in Bhubaneswar,” adds Col Balbir.
BEGINNING
It was one of the evening discussions by Pargat Singh, then Superintendent of Police in Jalandhar, with old friends from his native Mithapur village that led to an idea of establishing a hockey academy in the village. The rest, as they say, is history.
“It was sometime in mid 2005 while sitting with my friends from the village that I started enquiring about the next generation and took some specific names to know what they were doing. Almost all the names I mentioned either were into drugs or had migrated abroad. And the village hockey ground that once used to be occupied by the hockey playing youth had become deserted. I was shocked to know it has since been occupied by drug addicts. That conversation forced me to start a hockey academy in the village and the outcome is now in front of everyone,” says Pargat Singh, who is an MLA from Jalandhar Cantonment constituency, of which Mithapur is a part of.
“Initially, we started with 40 kids and formed two groups, under-12 and under-14. Current Indian captain Manpreet is from the first batch,” adds Pargat, who played in three Olympics (1988, 92, 96).
YOUTH SPORTS CLUB
The hockey centre is run under the Youth Sports Club, Mithapur and over 100 youngsters hone their skills in the sport. Many have made it to the national-level in various age categories.
“The club has appointed a coach and two-three seniors from the village help him daily. Apart from the maintenance of the ground, providing free kits, refreshments and other equipment, the club is managing everything of its own since its beginning, without looking to the government for financial support,” says 70-year-old Surinder Pal Singh, a former national-level player. “The annual budget for the centre is around ~6 lakh, and with the help of good samaritans and some NRIs from the village, we meet these expenses on our own,” adds Pargat.
A WAY TO BETTER LIFE
Manpreet, Mandeep and Varun were also part of the Jakarta Asian Games where India won bronze, later winning silver in the Champions Trophy. The achievement in Jakarta got them a cash award of ~50 lakh each form the Punjab Government, apart from cash incentives from the central government and their respective departments.
“Manpreet and Talwinder Singh — who were part of 34 propables for the World Cup — were from the first batch. All the kids who stuck to hockey from that batch got decent jobs because of the sport. Around seven-eight from the batch who left the sport later migrated abroad in search of a better life. But the level of respect and fame Manpreet and Co are getting, even the ones who moved abroad feel envious as they too were of equal calibre,” says a former national hockey player Shashi Bhushan, a school coach in Jalandhar who trains village kids in the evening.
“There was a time when the parents used to look towards the passport office when a child was born, hoping to send him abroad as soon as he was past his teens. Now also it’s the same, but the only difference is earlier it was used to migrate to England, Canada, America… now to have the documents ready hoping for an India call up. All thanks to hockey,” signs off Shashi Bhushan.