Jyoti first from Kanpur to represent India in Asiad
KANPUR: Jyoti Shukla became the first Kanpur sportsperson to represent India in any Asiad when she played for the country as a member of the women’s handball team in the Jakarta Palembang Asian Games. The women’s handball team finished ninth in the recently concluded Asian Games.
It was no mean feat for a player from a city, which is otherwise synonymous with cricket and cricketers.
Little wonder, her father Shiv Shankar Shukla describes Jyoti as a gritty girl.
He says she overcame many obstacles to make it to the Indian team at the age of 20.
“She made it to the Indian team despite our family facing its worst financial crisis for the last 10 years,” he says. It was not easy for the family to make ends meet as Jyoti’s parents had to provide for her four siblings as well.
For Jyoti’s success, the family gives credit to her courage and the help she received from her school’s sports teacher Ramakanti, coach Rajat Aditya Dixit and Atul Misra.
Jyoti started playing handball when she was in class 6 at the Purna Devi Girls Inter College. Her teacher Ramakanti had introduced her to handball coach Atul Misra in 2008 and he started training her at the Green Park stadium.
Success came quickly as she won her first gold medal at the district level handball championship in 2008 and another gold at the national level handball championship in 2009.
Impressed by her skills, Rajat Aditya Dixit referred her to the Sports Authority of India Hostel in Lucknow in 2010 for rigorous training. Within three months, Jyoti got a good platform to exhibit her talent at the regional, district and later at the national level. She won a gold medal at the state level championship in 2011 and another gold medal at an international championship in 2015, besides a bronze medal in Uzbekistan.
Jyoti also won a gold medal in the South Asian Handball Championship at Dhaka in 2016. She represented the country in Sweden too but the team failed to secure any position there.
In Singapore, she bagged the Young Rising Player Award in 2016.
Her success in handball got her a job with the North Eastern Railway in 2016. She was head TTE (travelling ticket examiner) at Gorakhpur and played for the railways, Dixit said.