Adding one more feather to its cap, Jharkhand lawn Bowls Association, for the first time, has been entrusted to train lawn Bowl team taking part in the Commonwealth Games to be held at Glasgow, Scotland. The coaching camp is to start from February 2 which will continue for 21 days.
Talking to media persons, Jharkhand Olympic Association (JOA) General Secretary SM Hashmi called it a proud moment for the association. “We are proud to announce that JOA for the first time has been provisionally selected to hold the coaching camp in Ranchi for the lawn bowls players taking part in the Glasgow Common-wealth Games,” said Hashmi.
“Treasurer of JOA Madhukant Pathak, has qualified to coach the players for the CWG,” he added. Pathak has great expectations from the players of Jharkhand. “Players here are technically more refined than the others and I expect that they will be able to bag more medals in the forthcoming Games at Glasgow,” he said.
According to Pathak, as there is no age bar in the game, Manager for the CWG event will be chosen from among the players so that he could also be replaced as a substitute player. A total of 12 players are to be selected out of 24 selected during the National Games in Kolkata -6 each from both men and women sections.
Out of the team of 24 players selected during national lawn bowls national championship at Kolkata, nine are from Jharkhand most of which coming from some other sports background got attracted after watching the game. Jharkhand, beyond the expectations among the sports circle is gradually becoming the seedbed of lawn bowling attracting more and more players from other sports. “Earlier, I used to play Kabaddi but after not getting any chance in the National Games I shifted to lawn Bowling and after that there were no looking back,” said a team member Roopa Rani Tirkey.
Dinesh Kumar and Krishna Khalkho, national players from Jharkhand have been drawn to the sport due to the uncertain future football offered them. lovely Choubey however, used to practice athletics but shifted to lawn Bowl after finding it attractive after watching others practicing the game. Ever since the sport was introduced in 2007 in Jharkhand, players like Sunil Bahadur, Dinesh Kumar and lovely Choubey have secured top medals in various national and international tournaments.
Presently, Jharkhand has the credit of bagging more than 15 International and over 20 National medals in the sport. Pathak, who happens to be the coach for both Jharkhand and national teams, attributes ceaseless practice and dedication towards the game for the remarkable performance in various national and international competitions.
Opening up of RK Anand lawn Bowls Green also proved to be a boon for the players in Jharkhand helping them to nourish themselves who pursued lawn bowling as their livelihood unlike a leisure activity for those living in Metros. Though the Commonwealth Games will be played on grass, due to unavailability of the grass courts, the players here will be trained on the synthetic surface which is available here at RK Anand lawn Bowl stadium.
“As we don’t have a grass court here, the players will be trained on the synthetic court. later they might be trained at Kolkata which have grass court,” said Pathak. Pathak, however, clarified that speed (duration) on the synthetic surface is more or less similar to that of the grass surface at Glasgow. “The speed at the Glasgow grass surface has been recorded to be 14.5 seconds while here at the synthetic surface has been recorded as 15 seconds which is quite nearer to that against the Kolkata grass surface which is much less than this,” pointed out Pathak.