Dabulian, a success story

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Sultanpur Lodhi, February 20

For Arjuna Award-winning basketball player Sajjan Singh Cheema, it’s payback time.

The retired cop, on a mission to set up a full-fledged sports stadium in his native Dabulian village, will inaugurate a double basketball court tomorrow, with equipment for four sports disciplines — weightlifting, discus throw, kabaddi and basketball.

The tiny hamlet, which already boasts of an Arjuna Award and more than 100 national and international medals, now has 90 children, including 25 girls, who have dreams of sporting glory in their eyes. The children assemble at the court at 5am every day to play.

Cheema, his brothers and cousins, all known for excelling at sport, have spent around Rs 7 lakh for the new infrastructure. They hope that this would be a game-changer for the poor families in the village, because sports will open up avenues for their children to enter the police or armed forces.

“Every household in the village is sending its kids to get trained in sport. We have roped in national-level player Yadwinder, who too hails from the village, for coaching,” Cheema said. “The players earlier had to wait a long time for their turn as there was a single court, but now this problem will get partially resolved with a twin court.”

“To carry on this work, we have instituted a society in the memory of my elder brother Balkar Singh, who alone had 35 international and national medals to his credit,” Cheema added. “We are also providing balls, tracksuits and shoes to the players, besides ensuring that they would get free higher education from Lyallpur Khalsa College, DAV College, HMV College or LPU in Jalandhar.”

Happy days

Cheema, who was the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Sultanpur Lodhi in the 2017 Assembly polls, said: “More than politics, I am enjoying this work now. Seven months since I began actively supporting these budding players, nearly 10 boys and girls have already played at the state level.”

“Half of the district teams in the Under-14, Under-17 and Under-19 categories of girls and boys are from the village now,” he continued with pride. “The biggest satisfaction is that all of them are kids from poor families, with their parents working mostly as masons or daily-wagers.” “When I started playing the game, the nearest court was 13km away from my village in Kapurthala,” Cheema said.

Currently, Hardeep S Tajipur and Anmol from the village are national-level players, while Akashdeep, Manpreet, Gurpreet, Yograj, Anju, Lovepreet and Charanjit have all played in various state tournaments.

Today, the excited youngsters of the village were working overtime, helping with last-minute preparations for tomorrow’s gala opening. They were cleaning up the site, planting samplings and putting up banners at all entrance points, hoping that Dubai-based philanthropist SPS Oberoi would also come to their support.