Sports Complex to reopen after long vacation

By Omji Dubey

VADODARA: With the number of cases reducing at a prominent rate in Gujarat, the state government recently reopened theatres, restaurants, malls, and other public places. Soon, the Sports Authority of Gujarat also decided to reopen indoor sports complexes.

All these decisions, however, came with a series of rules and regulations. Mahesh Thakkar, an official from Sama Sports Complex in Vadodara, said they have received guidelines from the state government for the systematic reopening of the complexes.

“Only certain sports which are taught by government coaches have been made available for the general public. We have had national players coming here and practicing their respective sports before the complex was reopened for the general public,” he added. “Masks and sanitizers have been made compulsory. All the coaches have been asked to submit the list of students of their respective sports so that we have clarity on the number of people. As there are some sports where social distancing cannot be practiced, we regularly keep an eye on players and check if there is any player who has any health issues,” Thakkar said. Devesh, who works as a watchman in the sports complex, has his hands full. He makes sure that everyone sanitizes their hands before entering the complex and maintains a record of every visitor, be it a sportsperson or coach.

“Usually there is no crowd in the morning. People start coming after 5 pm. The number of visitors has definitely gone down as only four to five sports have resumed till now. However, we do get visitors, who come here just to enquire about some sports,” he said. All the government-appointed coaches are back on the ground almost after a year.

While they have been receiving their salaries regularly from the government, they said they missed the physical training a lot.

One of the coaches said, “We have been training the national players online through helping them with their techniques, regular exercising, and providing them dietary plans.

“Even if the approach of online teaching is very limited in sports, we have received the same amount of supports from our players during these hard times,” he said.

Though everything seems to be alright, private coaches who have rented a place in the sports complex are finding it difficult to come back as one of the guidelines by Special Area Games (SAG) says that there must be at least 10 players to start practicing again. While sports, such as table tennis, badminton, karate, and basketball have had more players, the space rented to private coaches of boxing, chess, and other sports remains vacant.

(This story was first published in The Of Bennett, a student-run initiative of The Times School of Media, Bennett University.)
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