With a view to help India rediscover its glory days in hockey, philanthropic organisation Tata Trusts has partnered with Dutch great Floris Jan Bovelander to set up a world class hockey academy in Jamshedpur.
"Tata Trusts aims to bring back the erstwhile glory of Indian field hockey through professionalising grass-root level hockey and bringing the global best to train domestic coaches," said a media release here today.
The Tata Trusts' project, in partnership with Bovelander and Bovelander B V (founded by the Dutch Olympian) and One Million Hockey Legs, Netherlands, "will touch 50,000 school boys and girls and aims at generating 200 high quality players at the end of a three year period," the release said.
"Setting up a world-class Tata Hockey Academy "will create the necessary institutional structure to continue to nurture Indian talent for hockey leagues and international tournaments," the release added.
"At the Trusts we view sports as a vehicle for social change. Often we look at all the developing sector as a supply driven area but sports is on the contrary generating demand which unites people. It is indeed a great honour to partner with a legend of the sport," said R Venkataramanan, Executive Trustee, Tata Trusts.
"We are currently working with a lot of schools around Jharkhand and across the country in more traditional areas such as health and education and hope to enhance our programmes with what this partnership has to offer," he added.
Tata Trusts are also developing a school hockey programme focusing on building training aptitude of coaches through comprehensive training by international experts and coaches.
Within a span of three years, One Million Hockey Legs will provide the technical expertise to train 50,000 school boys and girls in hockey to raise overall expertise of players at the preliminary level, the release said.
"This initiative will promote hockey and sustain the helm of hockey as a national sport in India. We aim to train from the grass root level and our goal is to reach the million hockey legs in the 2018 World Cup which is scheduled to take place in India," said Bovelander.
