Eight nations, 150 gamers and lots of extra officers have descended on the traditional Bihar city of Rajgir for the Hockey Asia Cup. But, the backdrop of the highly-consequential event — which doubles up as a qualifier for the 2026 World Cup — is much less hockey, extra politics.
With the state heading to the polls later this 12 months, throughout the aesthetically-designed, 99.7-acre, Rs 600-crore complicated are posters and hoardings of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Searching for a fifth consecutive time period in workplace, the Chief Minister is in every single place – on banners on the entrance to the stadium; on the buses that ferry the groups; on a balloon hovering over the bottom; on the lamp posts that gentle up the tiny, winding streets; and the water tank overlooking the city. He seems throughout matches smiling on the digital ad-boards across the discipline of play, and peeks into the bottom from an enormous hoarding simply behind the north stand. He additionally seems on the state authorities’s web site, selling the Asia Cup.
Nitish unveiled the event’s emblem, mascot and the trophy. On August 29, he travelled to Rajgir to inaugurate the Asia Cup. Earlier than the India-China match, Nitish took a lap of the stadium, waving on the hundreds of spectators for shut to fifteen minutes.
The Asia Cup, he hoped, would make Bihar a ‘world’ vacation spot. “The event’s arrival in Bihar underscores the state’s rising prominence on the worldwide sports activities stage,” he was quoted as saying in a press release launched by Hockey India earlier this 12 months.
Tapping into hockey — a sport of sentimental significance to many Indians — as a gentle energy venture isn’t a brand new technique. For the final 11 years, Odisha has used the game as a car to advertise itself as a sporting and tourism vacation spot by investing closely in constructing infrastructure and internet hosting worldwide tournaments in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s {photograph} could be seen on an official staff bus. (Specific Photograph by Mihir Vasavada)
That is solely the third time since 2014 that an official senior males’s worldwide event in India is being held outdoors Odisha after the 2014-15 FIH World League Remaining in Raipur and the 2023 Asian Champions Trophy in Chennai.
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Bihar State Sports activities Authority Director Common Raveendran Sankaran mentioned the event was deliberate years in the past and was not ‘election-oriented’.
“I encourage to vary. If this might have occurred in haste, considering that elections are across the nook, it was a unique story. However we began two years in the past,” Sankaran advised The Indian Specific.
“The second the Ladies’s Asian Champions Trophy (additionally held in Rajgir final 12 months) was completed, Hockey India approached us, asking, ‘Would you love to do the Asia Cup for males?’ That day itself, once more, we spoke to the federal government and so they mentioned, ‘take it’. Again then, we didn’t know something about elections.”
Sankaran mentioned the true “motivation” is to show across the sporting fortunes of the state.
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Within the quickly increasing Indian sports activities ecosystem, Bihar has remained a perennial laggard. There have been no worldwide hockey gamers and, on the final Nationwide Video games in Uttarakhand, the state completed twenty eighth.
Posters of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar outdoors staff accommodations of South Korea and Japan, close to the stadium. (Specific Photograph by Mihir Vasavada)
State sports activities officers, nevertheless, mentioned that sport has change into a ‘precedence’ within the final three years, with investments price a whole bunch of crores made in several sports activities, from athletics to rugby. The hockey push, Sankaran mentioned, could be seen from that lens. “Once I joined in 2022, it was solely Rs 30 crore. Now, in 2025-26, it’s Rs 680 crore.”
Rajgir, virtually the again of past, is an intriguing vacation spot to host the competitors. Rather less than 100 km away from Patna, it has no sporting historical past and hockey generates little pleasure amongst locals.
Within the sparsely-populated countryside — the place the sports activities complicated is located, in the midst of sprawling fields and the Rajgir Hills within the background — there’s little to recommend the continent’s showpiece event is being hosted right here.
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Dozens of police personnel guard the empty streets to ‘guarantee full security of the visiting groups’, in response to a policeman stationed outdoors a modest resort the place the South Korean staff is staying. It’s the one indication of one thing ‘essential’ going down within the neighborhood.