lack of technical support and required facilities cost medal to the Indian lawn Bowlers at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games (CWG) 2014 in GlasgowIJ Hosts of the players feel so.
For the first time ever, Men’s team could manage a position in the semi-final but lost to Australia by one point in the match for bronze medal. Similar tragedy had happened with the Women’s team in CWG 2010 held at New Delhi when they lost to England.
The team comprises five players from Jharkhand namely Dinesh Kumar, Chandan Kumar, lovely Choubey, Rupa Rani Tirkey and Sunil Bahadur who accompanied by other five state players represented India. Players cite the failure with ‘government’s rare attention’ to the game.
“Government never allots fund for our participation at international tournaments. This was the second time when Sports Authority of India (SAI) managed our expenses. In 2010 when India had hosted CWG, we were funded. Otherwise, for tournaments including Asian lawn Bowling Championship, Sime Darby Merdeka Asia Pacific Bowling meet and World Cup, we have to pay for our participation,” said Chandan Kumar who along with Dinesh, West Bengal players Samit Malhotra and Kamal Kumar Sharma represented Indian Men’s team at CWG and contested for the bronze medal.
lovely Choubey, Gold medalist of Sime Darby Merdeka Asia Pacific Bowling Championship 2013 (mixed pair) and silver medalist in the Calcutta Nationals focused on the difference of ball, said, “Ball used by foreigners can take turns but the ball we Indians use cannot be turned. Eventually, we fail to make a proper angle.”
In order to practice for the Asia-Pacific tournament scheduled by the end of September, Choubey has brought a set of balls from Glasgow while Dinesh Kumar is trying to remind the techniques of best lawn bowls teams like Australia, England and Malaysia in CWG 14 so that he too can perform well for the upcoming game.
Elaborating the root cause creating obstacle in development of the game in India, Dinesh said, “We never play in rains but the foreigners are expert players in any kind of weather.
At Ranchi we practice in synthetic turf which helps in balancing the ball, whereas in Kolkata we perform on heavy grass where it takes effort to run the ball but in Glasgow the ball runs fast since the grass is light weighted. We must be provided facilities like international stages.”
Notably, only one national camp is organised for the lawn Bowlers in India which according to the players is not sufficient for participation at international meets.
“At least 10 tournaments including state, national and international levels should be conducted for lawn bowlers in a year. Unfortunately, Government never takes regular initiative of contesting us with foreign teams. We are only given opportunities to play at state and national levels once a year,” Chandan said.
Interestingly, sources maintained Chief Coach of Indian team cum Secretary of Jharkhand lawn Bowls Association Madhukant Pathak discussed the woes with SAI Director General Jiji Thomson when the later had visited Glasgow.
“SAI DG had assured to solve our problems. Till date, nothing has been done. It takes a long time for implementation of Government’s assurance,” sources said.