Bhubaneswar is the ‘Sports Capital of India’: Narinder Dhruv Batra

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KalingaTV News Network

New Delhi: “While Delhi is the political capital, Mumbai the financial capital and Bengaluru the IT capital of India, Bhubaneswar is undoubtedly the sports capital of the country”, said International Hockey Federation (FIH) and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) President Narinder Dhruv Batra on Thursday. He said this while attending the World Hockey Cup-2018 function at the Lait, Barakhamba Avenue in New Delhi.

The IOA President further said, “The crowd over there, cheers the players a lot irrespective of their teams and countries. I hope the forthcoming Men’s Hockey World Cup-2018 scheduled to be held in the Kalinga Stadium will be one of the best World Cups ever.”

Similarly, Indian Hockey legend Dhanraj Pilay, who also attended the event said, “People of Odisha love the game (hockey) a lot and the state government takes all steps for the promotion of the sport. We need more CMs like Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik for promotion of sports especially our national game – hockey.”

Their statements have come in the wake of Bhubaneswar successfully hosting two major sports events last year- 22nd Asian Athletics Championship-2017 and Men’s Hockey World League 2017 and the Men’s Hockey World Cup is slated this year in the same venue of Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar.

The Men’s Hockey World Cup-2018 is scheduled to be held from 28 November to 16 December 2018. Around 16 countries are slated to participate in the tournament.

Odisha government, keeping in mind the grand scale of the event, has decided to develop the practice stadium on the Kalinga Stadium premises as a second stadium. It has also finalized to add two more galleries in the north and south side to increase the seating capacity of the stadium from 9,000 to 20, 000.

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