Mithapur’s Olympics hockey capt is flag-bearer again

JALANDHAR: The naming of hockey team captain Manpreet Singh as India’s flag-bearer at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics along with boxing legend Mary Kom has put the spotlight on Mithapur village, near Jalandhar. It will be for the second time that a sportsperson from this Punjab village will be leading the Indian hockey team in Olympics and will be the flag-bearer of the country’s squad. The first player to have this honour was Pargat Singh, who participated in three Olympics (1988, 1992 and 1996) and is the only hockey player in the world to have been captain of the country’s team twice, in 1992 and 1996.
A product of the hockey academy in the village, Manpreet got further training at the Punjab government-run Surjit Hockey Academy Jalandhar. With eight players in the Indian hockey squad from Punjab, it is for the first time since 1976 that Punjab’s representation in the hockey team has risen to this level. It was in 2000 that Punjab’s Ramandeep captained a hockey team in the Olympics.
Team mate Mandeep Singh too is from Mithapur while Hardik Singh belongs to neighbouring Khusropur village. Both are products of hockey schools of their villages and the Surjit Hockey Academy.
“It is highly satisfying that after 45 years the number of players from Punjab has touched this high in the Olympics team. They all are products of the feeding centres revived in 2005 across Punjab,” Pargat said. Punjab’s representation in Indian hockey had gone down, but Pargat, after his appointment as Director Sports during Captain Amarinder Singh’s previous tenure as CM in 2005, laid eight full-size and 25 half Astroturfs in villages.
“I simply revived 50 pockets where hockey craze had remained, even if not obvious,” Pargat said. “We picked up children at the right age and gave the9m right coaching in their villages. The best would go to academies at Amritsar, Ludhiana and Mohali and then to the Surjit Academy in Jalandhar. The youngest were aged 8. It needs a long-term investment and strategy to produce winners for the country,” he said.