Haryana’s teen basketball players’ death shocks, sends ripples across sports players
The information of 16-year-old national-level basketball participant Hardik Rathi’s death throughout routine practise at a court docket in Haryana’s Lakhan Majra has left many shaken. The visuals from the CCTV footage exhibiting the basketball pole falling on the younger athlete, crushing him beneath its weight, is so chilling that it has ignited issues in regards to the state of sports infrastructure accessible in Haryana, which is named the breeding floor of medal-winning sportspersons.
While Hardik is seen training alone within the video, he sprints from the three-point line and jumps as much as contact the basket. But, as quickly as he grabs the rim, in a cut up second the pole uproots and crashes whereas pinning him beneath its weight.
This, nevertheless, isn’t the one incident. Recently, in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh district, a 15-year-old basketball participant, Aman, died as a consequence of an analogous accident because the basketball pole fell on him throughout apply inflicting him inner accidents.
“To see such young lives gone this way breaks my heart,” says Narender Kumar Grewal, a former member of Indian National Basketball Team, including, “I have played on basketball courts in Haryana all my life, and to see this lapse in infrastructure should force us all to think where we are lacking… We have top quality manufacturers in India and at the national level usually we use equipment from those, but sometimes at the local courts we tend to compromise due to financial limitations… The ring is the most important and should be the best quality so we need to make sure that we are not installing low quality rings, poles and other equipment.”
Karnal-born Ajmer Singh, former Olympian and Arjuna Awardee, feels such tragic loss has additionally uncovered one other hole: upkeep. “The newer basketball courts in the country are being built to top-notch quality but this incident has forced us to talk about a more important issue, which is how are we maintaining the older courts. Incidents like these happen due to lack of maintenance. Maybe the nuts in the pole were loose or the rust caused it to break down. So regular checks and maintenance is absolutely important.”
The affect of those incidents can be being felt amongst faculty college students similar to these in Delhi University who hail from Haryana. One such scholar, Ritika, who’s pursuing BSc in Physical Education at DU’s School of Open Learning, shares how being a budding participant makes her really feel tense about seeing such incidents. “This could have been us… After the incident, me and my teammates felt we don’t want to go to practice. Not all players can afford to train at the top facilities, but we don’t want to feel unsafe when practising at our local courts! It’s important for the authorities to look into this at the earliest lest India will lose more future medallists.”
