PINAKI MAJUMDAR
Jamshedpur, Dec 15: Tata Steel Limited has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Hockey India to become an official partner of the FIH Hockey Men’s World Cup 2023 in Bhubaneswar-Rourkela.
The FIH Men’s World Cup is the pinnacle of men’s hockey tournaments. The 15th edition of the esteemed event is likely to take place in Bhubaneswar-Rourkela from January 13 to January 29, 2023.
Chanakya Chaudhary, Vice President, Corporate Services, Tata Steel, said, “As a committed and long-term patron of sports in India, Tata Steel takes pride in being associated with the Hockey Men’s World Cup once again. The state of Odisha has come to be recognised as a hub of the National sport, and Tata Steel is honoured to be part of the journey. We wish the tournament all the very best and hope it would encourage more youngsters to take up this sport in the future.”
The FIH Odisha Hockey Men’s World Cup 2023 Bhubaneswar-Rourkela will be the fourth time that India will be hosting the prestigious tournament after having played hosts in 1982 in Bombay, 2010 in New Delhi, and 2018 in Odisha. A total of 16 nations will take part in the tournament.
Tata Steel has helped to enhance India’s national sport through several elite high-performance residential hockey training facilities, international coaches, nutritionists, and mental and physical trainers.
This journey started with the Naval Tata Hockey Academy which was founded in the year 2017 as a state-of-the-art facility to enable budding field hockey talent at the grassroots level in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand.
The Naval Tata Hockey Academy, established in 2017 as a state-of-the-art facility for aspiring field hockey players at the grassroots level in Jamshedpur served as the starting point for this voyage.
Currently, there are around 65 centres of grassroots programmes with 3000 cadets run by Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives in the interiors of 3 districts of Jharkhand.
In addition, nine centres are being run by Tata Steel Foundation in the interiors of other districts of the State along with 300 cadets. These talented cadets from the grassroots centres are promoted to the Regional Development Centre, where they are given advanced training along with better pitch and match exposure at the state levels.
After a certain age, these cadets have a chance to join the Naval Tata Hockey Academy, Jamshedpur and Odisha Naval Tata Hockey High-Performance Center, where they are trained for the selection trials of reputed Hockey academies in India and Sports Authority of India Centres.
