Hockey coach Baldev Singh to be honoured with Padma Shri

Baldev Singh, a renowned hockey coach, will be awarded the Padma Shri on May 25 for his contributions to producing elite hockey talent in Shahabad Markanda.

Baldev Singh, who turned the quaint town of Shahabad Markanda on NH44 into a conveyor belt for elite hockey talent, will be conferred the country's prestigious civilian honour -- Padma Shri -- by President Droupadi Murmu on May 25, officials said on Wednesday.

The 75-year-old Singh arrived in Shahabad Markanda in 1982 as a coach with the Haryana Sports Department and served there for four years. He returned to the town in 1993, turning the hockey nursery into one of ''the most productive centres for hockey talent'', they said.

Beginning his professional career with the Namdhari Hockey team, Bhaini Sahib, and armed with a diploma in hockey coaching from the National Institute of Sports (NIS), Bengaluru, in the early eighties, Singh used his experience in mentoring over 80 international players and eight Indian captains in the sport.

With the academy becoming a provincial engine for the sport, Singh occupied pivotal roles within hockey's competitive apparatus, serving as chief coach and selector of the junior men's team in 1993, assistant coach of the Indian side that won the Champions Trophy in Madras in 1996, and later chief coach of the senior national team.

From 2001 to 2004, he served as coach of the Indian men's team, including at the Champions Trophy held at Amstelveen, Netherlands, and guided the team to a gold medal at the Asia Cup in 2004, they said.

For more than four decades, Singh has operated far from the glare typically reserved for star athletes, shaping the institutional scaffolding of Indian hockey contributing as hockey coach at Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University, Fatehgarh Sahib, Khalsa College, Amritsar, core member of the Olympic Task Force constituted by the Centre to prepare a road map for 2020 Tokyo, 2024, Paris and 2028 Los Angles Olympic Games.