Teen inspires Jalandhar sports museum

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 6

The status of the city as a hub of sports goods manufacturing is set to be commemorated with a sports heritage museum, inspirited by a 17-year-old.

Ojas Kharbanda, a Class XII student in a Dehradun school, is the force behind the idea. Son of the managing director of a sports good manufacturing company, Kharbanda says he grew up witnessing the changes in sports goods in one of their oldest factories in the Industrial Area. “The idea of collecting antique sports items struck my mind,” he says. 

“The industry is evolving daily, every renowned brand has come up from the city. Legends have played with the equipment that was made here. The sad part is that upcoming generations will never be able to know this thing... That’s the reason I came up with the idea of a sports museum.”

Among the ‘heritage’ equipment gathered so far are golf clubs made of bamboo in the 1960s, wooden hockey sticks made in the 1970s, and footballs and basketballs made of leather. All of these were found wrapped in old newspapers dating back to the 1970s. Kharbanda says he is not going to remove the newspapers as they give an indication about how old the equipment was.

Wooden no more

Sports equipment has evolved drastically over the years and the use of wood has declined. Modern golf clubs are made of carbon fibre, hockey sticks are made of graphite, and the balls used in football and basketball are made of moulded rubber. Kharbanda has been reaching out to the other industrialists and dealers to gather more information. He has also been trying to find antique equipment by advertising and using social media.

His father, Rajesh Kharbanda, laments that he has not been able to obtain old cricket bats. “This is sad, because the city has a great history of manufacturing cricket bats,” he says. He has been urging people to come forward with equipment dating back to the 1960s. “We’ve asked the dealers we’ll pay them Rs 10,000 in return,” he says.

The museum will be set up near the near Punjab Technical University, where the family operates a charitable hospital.