Of the 30 Haryana players at the just-concluded Tokyo Olympics, 12, including men’s wrestling silver medallist Ravi Dahiya, belong to Rohtak’s Maharshi Dayanand University.
The university, popularly referred to by its acronym “MDU”, has over the years turned out be the “sports nursery” of the State having produced 270-odd international-level players in various games, including 27 Arjuna awardees, since 1976.
Four of the Olympic medallists from the State — boxer Vijender Singh and wrestlers Yogeshwar Dutt, Sakshi Malik and Dahiya — are MDU alumni. While Vijender won bronze at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Yogeshwar and Sakshi won bronze at the London and Rio Olympics in 2012 and 2016 respectively.
In fact, five of the players at Tokyo – Sonam Malik and Anshu Malik (both wrestling), and three members of the Indian women’s hockey squad that narrowly missed out on the bronze medal but won a billion hearts – are at present students of the university, ranked 76th on the National Institutional Ranking Framework.
Not only this, 93 of the 141 players across eight teams at the Pro Kabaddi League have been the students of the university, says Devender Singh Dhull, Director (Sports), MDU. Besides, 20 MDU alumni have participated and won medals at the Commonwealth Games and 36 at the Asian Games.
World-class facilities
Though helped by the fact that the districts under the jurisdiction of the university, including Rohtak, Sonipat and Bhiwani, have an age-old culture of sports, especially wrestling and boxing, MDU has created an excellent infrastructure for sports that includes a centrally air-conditioned multipurpose gymnasium hall, an international-standard cricket stadium, AstroTurf hockey field, synthetic athletics tracks, international-standard swimming pool, lawn tennis courts and boxing and wrestling halls, among others.
“The university’s Directorate of Sports has the best coaches for different games and organises around 70 inter-college tournaments/games for its men and women student players. We also organise coaching camps for shortlisted student-players and arrange to send the team to inter-university and World University games and tournaments. We have students playing all 131 games recognised internationally,” said Dr. Dhull.
He, however, lamented that the infrastructure and government support at the grassroots level was grossly missing for the players, both in the State and at national level, and the only motivation for the players, mostly from a rural background, was job prospects and reward money.
“Also, it is the coaches at the school, college and university levels who identify and nurture talent in the initial years, but their efforts go unrecognised and unrewarded. Our coaches, such as wrestling coach Rajkumar Hooda, have produced the best players but they got nothing in return, not even a pat on the back,” rued Dr. Dhull.
