Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik, hockey and the legacy that he could be building | Latest News India - Hindustan Times
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Odisha’s Naveen Patnaik, hockey and the legacy that he could be building

ByDebabrata Mohanty
Aug 03, 2021 12:47 AM IST

Naveen Patnaik’s Odisha government signed a ₹100 crore deal with Hockey India in 2018 to sponsor the men’s and women’s hockey teams over the next 5 years.

Bhubaneswar: Moments after the Indian women’s hockey team beat the much-fancied Australians in Tokyo Olympics’ quarter-final on Monday morning, 74-year-old Naveen Patnaik stood on the verandah of his official residence Naveen Niwas in Bhubaneswar to record a congratulatory video message for the Indian eves.

Odisha sports minister Tusharkanti Behera said the state has become the sports capital of India due to chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s vision. (Screengrab/@Naveen_Odisha)
Odisha sports minister Tusharkanti Behera said the state has become the sports capital of India due to chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s vision. (Screengrab/@Naveen_Odisha)

“What a terrific game by our women’s hockey team against Australia,” said Patnaik, wearing a black tee and pyjama. The previous evening, Patnaik was seen standing and clapping for the Indian men’s team that beat Great Britain to enter an Olympics semifinal after a gap of 49 years.

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It was a game that Patnaik helped when not many others came forward. Like when Sahara backed out from sponsoring the Indian hockey teams in 2018, the Odisha government signed a 100 crore deal with Hockey India to sponsor the men’s and women’s hockey teams over the next 5 years. Describing the 5-year sponsorship deal as Odisha’s gift to the nation, Patnaik then described the game as a way of life in his state’s tribal region “where children learn to walk with hockey sticks”.

There was recognition on and off social media for the critical support his government extended to the game that he once played as a member of the Doon school hockey team. He was then the goalie.

India dominated the world hockey scene as hockey wizard Dhyan Chand led the national team to three successive Olympic gold medals in 1928, 1932 and 1936. But after the defeat in the 1980 Moscow Olympic finals, the game lost much of its popularity in India. Odisha helped give the game a much-needed push starting with the Champions Trophy hockey tournament in 2014.

In 2017, his government also sponsored Kalinga Lancers club that won the Hockey India League in January and followed up by hosting Hockey World League in December 2018 when Bhubaneswar’s Kalinga Stadium hosted World Cup Men’s Hockey tournament. The following year, Odisha hosted FIH Men’s Series Finals and Olympic Hockey Qualifiers 2019 and even the FIH Pro League in 2020. India is set to host the 2023 edition of the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup, after successfully organising it in 2018.

In 2023, Bhubaneswar and Rourkela will again host the World Cup Hockey for Men for the second time. In Rourkela of Sundargarh district, Patnaik government is building the country’s biggest hockey stadium with a seating capacity for 20,000 spectators that will be named after tribal leader Birsa Munda. To further strengthen the hockey ecosystem in Sundargarh, Odisha is also planning to lay a synthetic hockey turf in each of the 17 blocks of the district.

“Odisha is the sports capital of India thanks to the vision of Naveen Patnaik,” said Odisha sports minister Tusharkanti Behera. “It’s not just hockey, but our government is patronising many other sports disciplines starting from rugby to football.”

Just before the pandemic hit India last year, the first-ever Khelo India University Games was held in Odisha in which 4,000 athletes from 176 universities participated in 211 events in 17 sports events over a period of 10 days. In 2019, the state government tied up with Olympian gold medallist Abhinav Bindra to start a Targeting Performance Centre at the Kalinga Stadium complex. The centre’s services would include performance enhancement, injury prevention and management, biomechanics, physiology testing and training, recovery as well as strength and conditioning training.

In his home district of Ganjam, Patnaik is setting up an integrated sports complex that would have a synthetic athletic track, multi-purpose indoor hall, aquatic complex, basketball and volleyball courts, yoga hall, medical room and a 150-bed sports hostel, with a proposed expenditure of 43 crore. In November last year, his assembly constituency of Hinjili got a 500-seating capacity centrally air-conditioned stadium.

Rishabh Jaiswal, who runs Sporting Ethos, a sports science and medicine institute in New Delhi, said Odisha’s government’s sponsorship of games including hockey was a key element in creating a healthy sports ecosystem in the country.

“Odisha government deserves a lot of credit for the rise of an Indian hockey team over last 5 years. The Naveen Patnaik government’s public-private partnership for sports is a model for all states to follow,” said Jaiswal.

Some believe that Naveen Patnaik generous support may be an effort to create a legacy for the politician who has ruled Odisha for 21 years on the trot. To be sure, his father Biju Patnaik is credited as one of the makers of modern Odisha for delivering signpost projects such as Paradip port, Rourkela Steel plant, Hirakud dam and Bhubaneswar airport.

“Naveen perhaps wants to leave a legacy through sports and erase the image of Odisha as a state that is known for its poverty or punching bags of natural disasters,” said Gyana Ranjan swain, a political science professor. Incidentally, he was the first CM in Odisha to have made a hockey player a Rajya Sabha MP.

Of course, Patnaik won’t be the first to use sports to make a political statement. In 1995, Nelson Mandela used the Rugby world cup to get South Africa out of the isolation of world sports. The celebration of the Olympic Games in Greek city-states was an occasion for the rulers to discuss important political issues and form political and military alliances. While the Olympic games of 1964 sought to present a new, pacific Japan to the world, South Korea in 1988, China in 2008 and Brazil in 2016 have used the Olympics to mark their emergence on the world stage.

Back home, Patnaik’s critics agree that his decision to support hockey made a world of a difference. “He has given hockey a new lease of life through sponsorship and raised the profile of the state in the process. I only wish the money could be spent more on grassroots,” said Prasad Harichandan, former Odisha Congress president.

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