Sigra to Host All-India Divyang T20 With 96 Players From Six States, 9-11 October

Ninety-six cricketers with disabilities from six states will play in an all-India T20 tournament at the Dr Sampurnanand Sports Stadium in Sigra from 9 to 11 October.

The tournament, called the PM Modi Janm Diwas Seva Sankalp Cricket Trophy, will be played over three days. Teams from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Vidarbha (Maharashtra) will take part, according to Dr Sanjay Chaurasia, general secretary of the All India Divyang Cricket Association.

All six teams have already registered, he said, and between them they will field 96 players.

The matches will be conducted by 25 match officials.

Association president Dr Uttam Ojha said sport builds team spirit and the will to fight. Players with disabilities move forward in life with great difficulty, he said, and the tournament is being held to build their self-confidence.

According to Kashi region president Ashok Chaurasia, the national tournament will be organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party's Divyang Cell.

The tournament's name ties it to the Seva Sankalp campaign run around Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on 17 September. The Prime Minister is also the Lok Sabha member from Varanasi.

The stadium it will be played in is named after Dr Sampurnanand, the Varanasi-born scholar and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister. The ground is better known in the city simply as Sigra stadium.

Divyang cricket in India is played in several formats, depending on the type of disability, including physically disabled, visually impaired, deaf and wheelchair categories. The organisers have not yet said which categories the six teams will represent or how the matches will be scheduled across the three days.

The venue has its own story. The Sigra stadium complex is being redeveloped, and the Varanasi Municipal Corporation this week imposed a ₹10 lakh penalty on the agency doing the construction for delays, giving it a month to finish. The stadium is also home to the Sports Authority of India's National Centre of Excellence, whose shooter Kamaljeet won gold at the Asian Games on Friday.

Ojha's reasoning was about confidence more than trophies. The tournament, he said, is meant to build self-belief among players who have had to struggle to move ahead in life.

Chaurasia's association, the All India Divyang Cricket Association, is conducting the tournament, while the BJP's Divyang Cell is the organiser named by the Kashi region president. The association has not yet released the fixture list.

Uttar Pradesh, as the host state, will field its own team, alongside the five visiting sides.

The competition opens on 9 October and the final is due on 11 October.