Ground report: Sporty gesture: NRI converts fields into playground
Whenever 60-year-old NRI Buta Singh Johal returns to his native place at Tehang in Jalandhar, the environment in the village becomes happy and positive. As he opens the main door of his house in the morning, his heart fills with pride on seeing children playing on a sprawling ground right in front of the house.
The ground where the young players train now used to be his agriculture fields earlier. Johal has been settled in the US since 1994.
His love for hockey made him turn his fields into a professional playground and a sports complex where the youngsters could be trained. Today, several needy, yet talented, players from the village train here.
“Whatever I am today, I owe it to hockey. I just want to repay my debt to the sport,” he tells The Tribune.
Johal started playing hockey during school days and continued participated in the sport at national level while he was posted in Punjab and Sind Bank. His son and daughter are also hockey players.
“I was already looking for a ground where budding players could train. I especially came here from the US to identify the ground. Despite my best efforts, the plan was not coming to fruition. Then my wife told me why don’t we use our land in front of the house,” Johal recalled.
“My wife was in the US. I told her that what would our son think about donating the land for the ground? To my happiness, my son, too, supported the idea,” he added.
It was January 2016 and Johal had grown wheat on the fields. However, he didn’t wait for the crop to mature and started the construction work and set up the sports complex. “I approached every household asking parents to send their wards to play. An expenditure of Rs 35 lakh was incurred on setting up the sports complex,” he said. Every year, a tournament is organised here. This year, the tournament concluded on February 16.
For Johal, it is the biggest ‘seva’ he can do. Today, over 40 players are learning hockey in the academy.
In the recently concluded tournament, the prize money was distributed to the teams by Jalandhar Cantonment MLA Pargat Singh.
The winning team was given a cash prize of Rs 21,000 and the runners-up bagged Rs 15,000. The prize was sponsored by US-based Kulwinder Singh, Olympian Baljit Singh Dhillon, Yadwinder Singh, Jagroop Singh Jarkhar, Daljit Singh and Sanjeev Kumar were also present on the occasion.
Johal said he invited all Olympians and international players just to motivate the budding players. “I didn’t call international hockey stars to brag about my connections. Rather, I wanted the players to learn something from their lives,” he added.
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