Chandigarh Sports Department to come up with tentative calendar

Chandigarh, July 16

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The UT Sports Department will now to come up with a tentative sports calendar for the current session, which has been affected due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The calendar will be followed whenever the Centre approves conducting tournaments or the situation gets better. With time till March 2021, the department is focusing on conducting major local championships so that local players can reap benefits.

Some major annual national invitational championships, including the All-India Administrator’s Football Cup and All-India Invitational Handball Championship, are unlikely to happen this year. “We are planning to make a tentative schedule for organising local championships. It will be followed once things gets normal or government gives clearance for conducting championships,” said a senior officer of the department. The focus will be on organising championships that benefit players in a way or another. The invitational tournaments, which usually take place in July/August, are likely to stand cancelled. We still have eight months to conduct as many as championships for the current session,” he added.

Sources said the department had sought details of sports calendars from neighbouring states, but have not received any reply so far. “Yes, we have written to the neighbouring states to seek their take on organising sports events so that we can also act accordingly. But so far, we have not received any reply,” said the officer.

Last year, the department had organised a series of tournaments of a majority of the disciplines for all age groups, besides hosting a women’s sports festival, rural sports meet and a three-week high-altitude summer coaching camp for the trainees of football and hockey academies.

The state-run football, hockey and cricket academies continue to remain shut. The trainees of these academies have not been called from their respective states, while the fresh batch is yet to be inducted in some disciplines. — TNS