With focus on grassroots, Dilip Tirkey hopes to build players and facilities for the future

The Hockey India president believes taking infrastructure to the youth, instead of the other way round, age-group events and monitoring is key to a strong sporting base

As a player Dilip Tirkey rarely spoke, but had determination and clarity of thought for both himself and the game. As Hockey India president now, he brings more of the same to his new role, focused not on top-down popularity but bottom-up development, both with the federation and the government.

“The Odisha government is focused on three areas for the big push: creating infrastructure, providing competition and a coaching programme. The three are inter-dependent and only a combined support to all will help develop the sport from the grassroots,” he told The Hindu in an exclusive interaction.

In fact, a Grassroots Development Committee, formed in HI in November last year with Tirkey as its chairman, is almost ready with a roadmap that will be implemented soon. “We will be creating a zonal system in hockey, more competitions at junior and sub-junior levels and preparing a pathway channel to track and observe players through the years so that talent doesn’t fall by the wayside and gets proper guidance,” he revealed.

“Not everyone can play for India so zonal championships will be an incentive to players and useful to get jobs. It will also create interest at sub-junior and junior levels with more age-group competitions,” he said.

It’s not a pipe dream; Tirkey has it all planned out, including having Indian teams at under-17 and under-19 levels to constantly monitor players and a separate selection committee for the age-group events.

“Suppose there are seven to eight States in a zone. They will compete and we will get a team from that zone. Then we will invite a combined team from SAI centres and a couple of academy sides — we already have a national inter-academy championship.