An academy to train world champion archers

In 1875, diminutive tribal hero Birsa Munda and his army of ethnic revolutionaries from the Jungle Mahal, as the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand was then known, used the humble wooden bow and arrow to fend off the mighty cannons of British imperialists.

Since then, the bow and arrow have evolved into the cultural and martial mascot of the tribals inhabiting the Chhotanagpur plateau that comprises most of tiny Jharkhand state.

The people of the area, who have a natural flair for hitting the bull\’s eye, still carry their bows and arrows as weapons of self-defence.

Naturally, talent abounds, said Captain Amitabh, head of the sprawling Tata Archery Academy in the town of Jamshedpur run by Tata Steel, part of the mammoth industrial group.

And this talent is being carefully honed at the academy to garner international recognition for India. The academy has been throwing up national and international champions since 2004, and has won 753 national and 169 international medals.

They are not all tribals, of course. The academy\’s merit list boasts of names like Dola Banerjee, the 2007 world champion, Rahul Banerjee, the 2008 world champion and Jayanta Talukdar, the 2006 world champion.

Then there are those waiting to join the list. Meet ace archer Deepika Kumari, the dusky girl with a fetching dimple from Ratu village near the state capital Ranchi. She is barely 16 - and a world champion already. Deepika won the gold medal in the cadet (junior) category at the Ogden World Cup held in the US in 2009.

Deepika, who trains for more than nine hours a day at the academy, is preparing for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi this October, and the Asian Games.

The academy is training a team of four men and four women archers for selection to the Commonwealth and Asian Games contingents.

The Tata Archery Academy, an integral part of Tata Steel\’s sports department, was set up in 1996 to train and promote local archers from the villages of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh states where the company has its mines and industries. It is one of the company\’s primary Corporate Social Responsibility components.

The academy later spread its wings countrywide to handpick talent for its four-year residential course.

\”However, it took us a decade to hone our archers to win laurels at the international level. This region is a treasure house of talent because the local ethnic people have been using bows and arrows for centuries,\” coach Purnima Mahto told IANS.

The academy currently has 21 cadets - 12 girls and nine boys - between 13 and 18 years who stay on the premises, train rigorously and study in a local school.

Most of them are from poor families in the villages; their cost of training, stay, education, equipment and exposure at different tournaments around the world is borne by the company.

Located on a landscaped stretch at the mammoth GRD Tata Sports Complex in Jasmhedpur, the academy comprises a huge training range that offers \”targets\” of 30 metres to 90 metres distance - the Federation of International Archers\’ (FITA) distance stipulation.

\”Archers have to prove their aim in four distance categories - 30 metres, 50 metres, 60 metres and 70 metres and 90 metres. While for girls the distance cap is 70 metres, for boys its 90 metres,\” explained coach Dharmendra Tiwari.

The academy has a hostel for the cadets, two state-of-the-art gyms, a swimming pool, a meditation and yoga centre, and a stadium (with 40,000 seats) with a synthetic track where the archers train for \”strength, agility and mind powers\”.

\”Besides, we also conduct regular counselling and motivation sessions, draw up special diet charts, hire foreign coaches (mostly from South Korea), and send our cadets abroad for training. The performance of each cadet is reviewed. Sometimes, we even weed out cadets if they fail to perform,\” Amitabh said.

Foreign training helps, added national champion Atanu Das, a cadet from Kolkata, who went from the academy to South Korea for training .

The academy has four feeder centres in the Tata Steel mines located in the tribal interiors, from where it sources local talent.

The training session is gruelling. A typical day in Deepika\’s life, for instance, begins at 8.30 a.m. for a four-hour morning training, followed by an afternoon session at 3 p.m. Night training begins at 6 p.m.

The archers practise with imported bows and the standard set of 144 arrows.

It is interspersed with strength and mind training and regular studies.

The hard regimen instills confidence.

\”I am confident of making it to the Indian team at the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games, scheduled soon after the Commonwealth Games,\” Deepika Kumari told IANS in between her morning practice session at the academy.

Cadet V. Pranitha, who was part of the Indian contingent for the Beijing Olympics, reflects the same optimism. She is preparing for the Commonwealth and the Asian Games. \”But my goal is the 2012 Olympics,\” Pranitha, a village girl from Warangal in southern Andhra Pradesh who was picked by Tata coach Dharmendra Tiwari, told IANS.

Tata Steel cannot always offer them jobs.

\”After training, they often leave for greener pastures. They are not bound to stick to us. We give the archers to the nation after grooming them. But if a cadet fares very well, we often ask them to stay on in the academy even after four years for advance training,\” Prabhat Sharma, head of corporate affairs and corporate communication, told IANS.

Archery, say sports pundits, is one of India\’s shining spots at the moment.

After the country\’s success at the Asian and international championships held this year, India is pinning its hopes on its archers to earn laurels.