Kolkata: Incumbents Swapan Banerjee and Istiyak Ali were re-elected as President and Secretary General of Hockey Bengal respectively in its annual general meeting here on Sunday.
As per a statement, Banerjee and Ali's panel were re-elected for a period of four years till 2023.
The statement added that the elections were conducted in the presence of a Hockey India observer, who attended via video-conference, while the Bengal Olympic Association had also sent its observer.
The body was previously known as Bengal Hockey Association, which was rechristened as Hockey Bengal as per the national federation's constitution.
Office Bearers: President: Swapan Banerjee; Senior Vice-President: Nand Kishor Rai; Vice-Presidents: Harjot Singh and Prochy Numazar Mehta; Secretary General: Istiyak Ali; Joint-Secretaries: Mohammed Khalid Hussain and Suravi Mitra; Treasurer: Anish Kumar Ghosh; Executive Committee members: Syed Allauddin, Bharat Malik and Amishi Gupta.
Meanwhile, after Kalinga Stadium opened its gates for elite athletes to train for the Olympics, the cadets from the Hockey High Performance Centre, the Naval Tata Hockey Academy Odisha, resumed outdoor training at the stadium following the Standard Operating Procedures as laid down by the state and COVID-19 international guidelines for players laid down by National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
Led by head coach, P. Laxminarayan, a team of 23, has been undergoing complete physical assessment and lab tests, performance management and analysis at Abhinav Bindra Targeting Performance Centre and individual Strength & Conditioning training.
Brighton Cup
Currently, though there is little hockey activity in Bengal, Brighton Cup is still one of the oldest surviving hockey tournaments in India being played in Kolkata. In 1895, the league began. The tournament was first held by the Indian Football Association (IFA) and now it is organised by Hockey Bengal.
Star players like Leslie Claudius, Gurbux Singh, Keshav Chandra Datt, Dhyan Chand, Pat Jensen, Joe Gallibardy and many others played the prestigious league. In fact, it is the reason why Kolkata (then Calcutta) used to be the hub of hockey in India, at least initially.
