The Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) government will be organising annual sports festivals from mandal to the State level under Adudam Andhra programme from this year to encourage more youth to actively participate in sports and games and identify talent for further grooming.
Taking stock of the arrangements for it at a review meeting of the Department of Youth Advancement, Tourism and Culture (Sports) at his camp office at Tadepalli near here on Thursday, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy said focus should be laid on cricket, badminton, volleyball, kabaddi and kho-kho and other disciplines like yoga, marathon, tennikoit and traditional games.
The sports festivals would be held for 46 days in a year.
A.P. team in IPL
The CM exhorted the officials to groom cricketers well so that Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) could also send a team to compete in the Indian Premier League (IPL) with the support of Chennai Super Kings (CSK), for which the government would be making a request.
He said the idea was to initially rope in the CSK to impart training to the players and avail the support of Mumbai Indians later. For now, the CSK would be assigned training programmes at three stadiums and the services of accomplished players like Ambati Rayudu and K.S. Bharat would be taken in future.
Sporting infrastructure should be created in all mandals and kits distributed to the players. Importance should also be given to other sports and games, he said, adding that sporting kits should be made available at the government schools, especially in the high schools.
An indoor stadium should be constructed in every constituency headquarters, he suggested.
