Limbdi shows the will and the way

An hour later, more than 250 boys and girls from primary to pre-university classes have flocked the ground. They are divided into various groups and put in the charge of the seniormost group member. For the next couple of hours, they are immersed in their hockey lesson.

Why is this a story? Because this is Gujarat, where you’d be hard put to find young people playing any sport with passion. Not even cricket, leave alone hockey.

Because Limbdi, a small town a couple of hours west of Ahmedabad, is no Sansarpur. The Punjab village has produced 14 Olympians and counting; Limbdi — probably all of Gujarat — none. And because it just goes to show that if with a bit of care, some focus and the right attitude, we can improve the standard of sport in India.

Make no mistake, Limbdi’s love of hockey is with a purpose. No dreams of an Olympic berth for them. Instead, with typical Gujarati pragmatism, they target a sports-quota job or a coaching assignment, which is their passport to a better life.

The first step towards that goal is the inter-college competition. A medal there means automatic qualification for the inter-university meet, the mother of all competitions for them. A stellar performance in the inter-university meet can help them gain a berth in the state team for the national championships. That should get them a job in any government service or PSU.

‘‘That’s all we can aim at’’, says ‘Masterji’ Mahender Singh Jhala, the physical director of Limbdi College who oversees the training. ‘‘If we progress higher than that, fine, but unless you compete at the university or state level you are not eligible for any job, so that is our prime focus.’’

In between demonstrating how to trap a through ball and shoot on the run, Jhala adds: ‘‘Even jobs are hard to come by these days. Earlier, we used to send many of our boys for interviews in the police and the army but that has gone down drastically.’’

Yet there has been success. In the past two years, some trainees have gone on to the National Institute of Sports (NIS) in Patiala and returned with degrees to find employment in institutions and clubs in and around the state.

Importantly, they also plough back expertise and equipment. As a sub-coaching centre of the Sports Authority of Gujarat, Limbdi is entitled to all kinds of sports equipment, training facilities and manpower but, typically, does without. So it falls on parents, teachers and alumni to pitch in — and they have.

Like Mangal Singh, an ex-armyman, currently working as a physical training instructor. ‘‘I just wanted to give something back to the people here for all the love and care they showed to me during my formative years. After my service period was over, I came back here’’, he says.

The equipment — shoes, tracksuits, shorts — comes from others who are still in service elsewhere. ‘‘Last month, one of our boys in the Army sent a huge cache of hockey sticks for the kids here. Receiving them at the station was a big occasion for the boys’’, says Jhala.

There’s a deeper role that hockey has, and can, play: Blurring the deep-rooted caste divide. Limbdi’s students hostels are divided along caste lines — Rajput, Baniya, Brahmin and a common hostel for the others. But when it comes to sports they play as one.

That practice began in the early 1980s when a kid from the Harijan Colony, adjoining the field, was taken in by the warden of the Rajput hostel, Anand Singh Musaheb, after showing his dribbling skills with a tree branch. The boy, Badshah Jadhav, had his studies and other expenses funded by Musaheb and, having graduated from NIS, is now a coach in Balsar.

A small step, but sometimes every little step helps.