Poetic Gift To 'Olympic's Heroes' By Hockey Coach

By Staff

Saturday, August 23, 2008, 7:07

Bhopal : When the entire country was applauding India's triumph in Beijing Olympics, a Hockey coach of Sports Authority of India (SAI) joined in the celebrations in a unique way by penning down a sonnet in honour of Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijender Singh.

Prem Shankar Shukla, also a member of Hockey Writer's Club in London, poured his feeling towards Abhinav for bagging gold in 10 m air rifle, Sushil for receiving bronze in wrestling and Vijendra for winning bronze in boxing in a poetic potpourri.

The Bhopal-based coach termed Bindra as 'Arjun of India' in a poem titled- Olympic Gold Medal list Abhinav Bindra.

Sharing the same turf with Hockey and Poetry in his book 'Poetic Hockey', which has a collection of 86 poems, Shukla this time eulogised the charisma of the 'Golden boy' Bindra in his unique manner: "Moment of glory for the million Indians Abhinav Bindra has proved champion of champions Handsome is that handsome does Olympics Gold, without any fuss Amazing performance with world record Controlled fingers with winning chord Arjun of India, he is loved by all Amongst world's best he proved very tall" "It is not about hockey, cricket or shooting. Whoever endeavours to buoy up the nation in front of world at international platform shall be applauded," he told UNI here today, adding that Bindra had set a benchmark for others by scoring the first individual gold for India.

"Sushil and Vijender, who hail from little known villages, brought laurels for their native hamlets" said the former Indian Air Force personnel.

He cherished their victory in this manner-- "The village boys miracle Attitude, tactics with subtle Breaking the record of years Bringing the happy tears Sushil and Vijender in Olympics Made the world salute them in quick" Shukla, who has penned more than 200 poems in English, Punjabi and Hindi so far, wrote on many aspects of Hockey like coaching, umpiring, dribbling, learning hit, goal scoring, goal keeping and mastery over other skills of the game.

The coach also penned on legendary hockey players namely - Major Dhyanchand, Balbir Singh Senior, Rajinder Singh, G S Bhangu, Dhanraj Pillay and A K Bansal.

International Hockey stars like King Azlan Shah (Malaysia), Richard Charlesworth (Australia), Ian Taylor (England), Cartson Fisher (Germany), AIS Dara (Pakistan), Paul Litzens (The Netherlands) were also subject of his poems.