Coimbatore will not have a hockey ground. Coimbatore Corporation that wanted to implement the project under the Smart Cities Mission will not pursue the project.
It was off the table, said an officer commenting on the ₹ 19.50 crore project.
The Corporation had proposed to build a hockey stadium with turf of international standards at its school on West Arokiasamy Road, R.S. Puram. The Coimbatore Smart Cities Limited had approved of the project in July 2019.
Thereafter, the Tamil Nadu Urban Finance and Infrastructure Development Corporation (TUFIDCO), which was associated with the approval process, had posed around 20 questions to the Corporation, most of which the latter could not satisfactorily answer.
The officer said the questions were regarding easy movement of vehicles to and from the hockey ground, position of gates proposed and suggestions were on exploring the possibility of creating infrastructure for other games such as basketball, table tennis, badminton, etc. so as to make it a multi-sports arena.
The reason that the TUFIDCO proffered was that by constructing the facility to be an only-hockey ground, there would be under utilisation of the investment and doing it a multi-sport arena would give way for round-the-year utilisation.
Unable to accept and accommodate the questions and suggestions, the Corporation had decided to give up the project.
This puts a question mark over the ₹ 75 lakh investment that the Corporation had made in the school ground – it had built a compound wall and constructed a part of the play area. But most of the money it spent went waste as the shock pad it had spread on the play area was damaged.
But all was not lost as the Corporation could salvage something, said P. Senthil Rajkumar, Secretary, Coimbatore District Hockey Association.
By investing another ₹ 50 lakh the Corporation could at least provide players a synthetic turf, which they would use for practice to compete in state and national events. Such participation would fetch the players certificates that they could use for admission against sports quota seats in engineering and arts science colleges in the city.
In the absence of training facility, Coimbatore’s players lose out to their counter parts from other districts and that means a loss of 100 – 150 seats a year.
