Jalandhar sports industry on weak wicket

Apart from being Harbhajan Singh's hometown, Jalandhar is famous for its sports industry, whose products are used by the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, and Steve Waugh, among countless other cricket heroes.

But the focus has shifted nowadays. What traders now talk about is how the "lopsided" import policies and government indifference are badly hitting the industry.

Since 90 per cent of the cricket equipment used all over the world is manufactured in India, with Jalandhar contributing nearly 30 to 35 per cent, it would not be far-fetched to say that Jalandhar figures every time a cricket match is played.

The local Rs 300-crore sports industry is nearly 110 years old and traders here are engaged in manufacturing cricketing equipments for some of India's best men.

For example Mange Ram, an artisan with Beat All Sports (BAS), manufactures bats for Sachin Tendulkar and the new entrant Mohinder Dhoni. However, for Mange Ram, even making the bat for Tendulkar is work as usual.

The picture is the same for R N Sports. Narinder Dev, R N Sports' owner claims that besides Tendulkar, the company also crafts bats for the Indian captain under the Larson brand name.

"A few years back, Steve and Mark Waugh, Ricky Ponting, and even Justin Langer sent a written requirement for bats to us," Narinder said.

"Sayeed Anwar congratulated us after hitting the marvellous 194 against India in Chennai with our bat. Even Arvinda de Silva, Salim Malik, Ijaz Ahmed, had used our bats and other equipments like pads and gloves" he added.

Issues bothering the industry, like the ban on Kashmir willow cleft and procurement of cane used for making bats, are generally handled from Andaman and Nicobar. "We import cane from Singapore but are not allowed to do so from our own country" said Ravinder Dhir, president of the sports forum.

While a drop in the supply of mulberry and willow wood has hit the Jalandhar's sports industry, the abundance of of the same have made Pakistan a top exporter of sports goods, Dhir added.

Kashmir's willow and mulberry woods have been the backbone of the sports industry since 1948, when it was shifted from Sialkot (now in Pakistan) to Jalandhar after partition, he said, adding, the industry flourished till 1988, when the Jammu and Kashmir government imposed a ban on the transportation of willow woods outside the state.

Another blow to the industry was the dwindling of mulberry trees in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh during the past one decade, owing to the lack of sufficient tree plantation after deforestation, Dhir said.