HEALTH

Milkha to lead ‘run for eye donation’
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 6
To mark the eye donation fortnight being observed all over the country from August 25 to September 8, the Sri Guru Harkrishan Sahib Charitable Eye Hospital, Sohana, will organise a “Run for eye donation awareness” from Sukhna Lake to the Sector 16 Cricket Stadium on September 8 at 7 a.m. Flying Sikh Milkha Singh will lead the run for eye donation, in which people from all walks of life — children, youth, senior citizens— will take part.

In India every year 25,000 persons are added to blindness, majority of them being children who suffer corneal blindness. At the moment hardly 22000 eyes are received all over India. There are fresh cases needing urgent corneal transplant, mostly children below 12 years getting blindness in both eyes due to Vit-A deficiency.

This is besides a backlog of 20 lakh corneal blind persons, mostly young adults, whose economic loss is at least 5 times more than cataract blindness.

De-addiction programme
Our Correspondent

Kharar, September 6
The Rotary Club, Kharar, will organise a drug de-addiction awareness programme on September 7 at 9 a.m. in front of main police station, Kharar.

The programme is aimed to create awareness in younger generation about the ill-effects and dangers of drugs.

According to Dr Chanderdeep Verma, project chairman, Gurcharan Singh and his team will present the play “Main eh nahi hon diyangi” on the occasion. A Choreography of “Today’s Bhagat Singh” will also be presented.

SPORTS

4 city sportspersons for Busan Asiad
Our Sports Reporter

Chandigarh, September 6
Four city-based sportspersons, including two girls, have made Chandigarh proud when their names were cleared by the Ministry of Sports for the Indian contingent for the forthcoming Asian Games to be held at Busan (Korea) from September 29. The girls — Saba Anjum (hockey) and Gurpreet Kaur (rowing) and the boys — Abhinav Bindra (rifle shooting) and Sunil Kumar Sipaeya (tennis) have been selected to represent India. Among the officials, N.S. Sodhi, Jaswinder Singh as coaches for men and women hockey respectively and Sidharth Chattopadhya in Judo have been given the permission. Only last evening, the Government of India had cleared 321 names out of the 400 submited by the Indian Olympic Association.

In the women hockey, the success of the team in Commonwealth Games where the Indian women hockey team won the gold medal, has forced the Indian Women Hockey Federation (IWHF) to keep the same team and also add promising junior players like Nishi Chauhan as standby.

It may be recalled that the Sector 18 Sports Training Centre of the Sports Authority of India had always produced excellent results as far as women hockey is concerned.

There are three former trainees of this centre Sita Gussain, Mamta Kharab, are in the team. The baby of the team, Saba Anjum, is still a trainee. The credit for the same goes to the dedicated hockey coach Jaswinder Singh who has been appointed physical trainer of the said team.

When contacted, Jaswinder said at present the team was undergoing rigorous training camp at NIS, Patiala, and players were practising hard under the strict supervision of Chief National coach G.S. Bhangu. N.S. Sodhi of Chandigarh will be the coach of the Indian men’s hockey team which is at present doing wonders at Cologne (Germany) in the Champions Cup Hockey Meet.

Sodhi is an employee of the State Bank of India but the Indian Hockey Federation had sought his services in the interest of the game.

Abhinav Bindra the star shooter of the city who bagged one gold medal in pairs event of the 10 metre Air Rifle and a silver medal in the XVII Commonwealth Games at Bisley (England) is also hopeful of giving a tough fight to top class shooters from China, Korea .

Though Abhinav, a winner of this year’s Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, award, will have to shoot more than 594/600, in order to be in race for medal in the presence of more experienced shooters.

Even the young shooter from Bangladesh who narrowly surpassed Abhinav to win gold medal in individal event at Bisley will be in action at the Asian Games.

Sunil Kumar Sipeya, who was nursed from the very beginning at the prestigious Tennis Stadium, Sector 10, under the Rural Area Promotion scheme of the Chandigarh Lawn Tennis Association, has in the past one month given a splendid display of tennis.

He has won the ITF Futures tennis meet, remained runner-up in the second.

He is also in the Davis Cup team. Sunil, a left hander, will be the lone tennis player from this region who would vie for top honours in the Asian Games.

Gurpreet kaur, a student of the local MCM DAV College for Women, Sector 36, had to her credit the magnificent performance she achieved in the last Junior Asian rowing meet and also in the National Games. She will be taking part in the “single scull” event. She also faces tough competition from the Chinese who are also good in rowing.

It will be her maiden experience in the Asian Games.

Naveen emerges winner
Our Sports Reporter

Chandigarh, September 6
The penultimate day of the ongoing Chandigarh Snooker and Pool Championship being played here at Sector 26 saw the upset win of Naveen Khosla over Manish Srivasatava, the top seed, in the open snooker event. Naveen defeated Manish 35-79, 60-30, 47-63, 78-49, 66-24.

In other matches of the senior snooker section, Deepak Goel outplayed Sandeep Sharma 60-20, 51-5, 55-14, Anil Sharma beat Anirudh 57-22, 52-34, 36-44, 75-26, BK Khurana b Manan Nagpal 52-26, 11-53, 6-56, 53-46, 55-43. Various winners in the event include Sumit Talwar, Sandeep Duggal.

In the junior snooker event, Lovedeep beat Ankur Nanda, Gagan Makkar beat Pramod Kumar, Sumit Talwar, Aman Bhasin. In the junior pool event, Gaurav Nagpal, Sumit Talwar,.Gagan Makkar and Aman Bhasin remained the winners in various matches played today.

Bridge tourney

An open pairs bridge tournament will be held on September 8 at Hot Millions in Sector 17. This was stated by Brigadier Ramesh Chander (AVSM), a spokesperson of the association. Entries for the same could be given at spot at 9.30 am.

Snooker & pool meet

In the Chandigarh Snooker and Pool Championship, Deepak Goel beat Tarun Kumar in the senior snooker by 51-44, 64-29,41-53 and 55-30; Sandeep Sharma beat Amar Benigal by 64-34, 21-62, 58-7 and 38-29; Deepak Goel beat Manav Dhawan by 58-34, 51-46 and 48-20; Sumit Talwar beat Pranav Jain by 62-15, 61-12, 53-22; Ashu Duggal beat Bhupinder Chaudhary by 33-66, 29-52, 49-8, 76-26, 47-34; Manav Nagpal beat Kamal Kant by 55-48, 8-65, 54-32 and 57-52; and Anil Sharma beat Deepak Miglani by 58-44, 45-17 and 47-21.

In the junior snooker: Aman Bhasin beat Ashish Gupta by 49-20 and 51-28; Sumit Talwar beat Akshay Sharma by 55-28 and 48-17. In the senior pool: Sandeep Sharma beat Manish Srivastava by 7-6; Aman Bhasin beat Sumit Talwar by 7-5 and Sumir Bhalla beat Akshay Sharma by 7-4. In the junior pool: Gagan Deep Makkar beat Aman Dhillon by 5-0 and Gaurav Nagpal beat Manu Singh by 5-3.

Football meet

The Sports Department, UT, will organise the inaugural administration Cup Football Tournament for below-14 from September 11 to 18 at the Sports Complex, Sector 42, Chandigarh. Teams from schools, clubs from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, New Delhi and UT will be participating. Five teams from Mahilpur, Roorka Kalan, Gurdaspur, Rewari and Sarba, besides local teams, have confirmed their entries.

In the tournament nearly 250 players are expected to participate. The last date to send the entries to the District Sports Officer is September 9 at complex.