It is heartening news that Dilip Tirkey Sports Research and Development Foundation is gearing up to organise a mega rural hockey tournament from November 2016 to March 2017. But staging such tournament to mark the birth centenary of former Odisha Chief Minsiter Biju Pattnaik and not including any venue from 22 district of Odisha in the list of 32 have raised two pertinent questions about the purpose of the proposed event.

Would it not have been more justified to christen it as Dhyan Chand Rural Hockey Championship instead of Biju Patnaik Rural Hockey Championship? After all hockey in India is synonymous with the Dhyan Chand, who has not been bestowed with the kind of honour he deserves the most as the first ever legendary sportsperson of the country.

Even our own hockey icon, Dilip Tirkey, who is also the chief patron of the proposed tournament, has been pioneering a demand to confer the Bharat Ratna Award on Dhyan Chand. Of course, Biju Patnaik is a legend in Odisha and two major hockey stadiums of the state and many a tournaments have already been named after him. Hence, staging a tournament of this stature in the memory of Dhyan Chand would have been Odisha’s humble tribute to the hockey legend and a boost for the sport in the state.

Similarly, two places from Jharkhand and one from Chhattisgarh have been included in the list of the 32 venues, but none from 22 districts of Odisha. Is this not discrimination? When hockey is yet to be made popular in most districts of our own state, why take matches to other states?
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PHOTO: Hockey Olympian Dilip Tirkey his wife Meera Tirkey and sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik at the launching of the logo of Biju Patnaik Rural Hockey Championship in Bhubaneswar on Sept 20, 2016.