There was a proverb,'Morning shows the day'.Hopefully Bengal has lost its morning very earlier. At 1900 Paris Olympics, Norman Pritchard, a boy from Calcutta, won two silver medals in 200m run and 200m hurdles.
However, there was a controversy whether the medals belong to Great Britain or India, but at present India owns them.India officially sent a team to the Olympics in 1920 at Antwerp.A bengali athlete Purnachandra Banerjee was in that Indian athletics team.In 1952, Indian women athletes joined Olympics as a team where Nilima ghosh was a representative of Bengal.1951, Asian Games. Bengal had five representatives in Indian team.But after then an ignorance preveiled .The importance of gaming and body building in the life style is still not recognized by this poor Bengalies.Years after years, the athletic world of Bengal has been raped by few people and few organizations.
In most of the Bengali newspapers, even after winning gold in the Junior National Competition in athletics, there remains no place for that male or female athletes who are from poor rural families.But if you open the sports page of a newspaper,a story about the separation of Mohammad Sami vs. Hasin Jahan will grab your eyes surely.What a dilemma!
In 1972, when the Munich Olympics was underway and Legislative sessions were going on in our state at the same time then one MLA was saying something about the Olympics. Interrupting him State Education Minister Mrityunjaya Banerjee, a professor by profession, said 'where the Olympics is going on?' This is our sports culture!
The Sports school, which was opened in Banipur in 2001 at the initiative of the state government,if you see it's condition now,you will be depressed surely.You can argue that state government are distributing money to countless clubs in different parts of the state now.But we are all aware of what happens with that money.Talents come from sports schools in different countries but here it is nothing but a business.
It was 1987 or 1988. Kerala was in its peak timing when all national medals were grabbed by their girls with full ease. But that time also Bengal girls defeated them and broke their pride. But now? Bengal won only one medal in the 600m run in girls category at the Junior National Athletics in Guwahati in last February (Tahura Khatun).In this august Bengal captured only two medals from Fedaration cup,one gold(Muhammad Asraf Ali)and a bronze (Aparna ghosh).Will it be our destiny?
We give more importance or blame the word 'Infrastructure'.Now we are saying we don't have the infrastructure. But if we go back a little, we can see when the center of Sai Purbanchal Centre or Yuvbharati sports ground has not been built and the only place to practice athletics was Rabindra Sarobar Stadium then also Bengal produced a lot of talents.But now the changed government restricted the entrance of athletes there.But they made a artificial track by spending a lot of bucks,why? There are no answer to be given.If I left the role of the government, the officials of the athletics cannot avoid the responsibility. The state athletics organization has no office of its own even after so many achievements.Is this how sports are played?
The great success of any state creates an environment there.You can witness when Kunjrani Devi got silver and bronze in weight-lifting or Dinko singh got gold in Asian cup 1998 the sports atmosphere of manipur has changed.As a result we get Merry com or Mira Bai Chanu.But after having a legend like Jyotirmoyee Sikdar we cannot make a change. All the excitements ended only in congratulations.Yet Soma Biswas, Sanjay Roy, Saraswati Saha, Susmita Singh Roy, Harishankar Roy, Pinky Pramanik,Debashree Majumder, Swapna Varman came up only with their determination and their coaches' struggle.There was no contribution of State at all.How far can we go in this way?
Even if other states tell us how to fight in adverse conditions, Bengal cannot adopt it.Bengal Athletics Training Centers are becoming the arena for getting jobs now.By hook or crook the trainees run only to get a job to lead the life.Lots of problems are there,but whatever the situation may be, let the Bengal athletics stay whether they are asleep or indifferent otherwise we cannot expect even the rarest hope like Sima Punia from this dead land,isn't it?
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