The civic body will set up these complexes in Mulund, Parel and Kandivli. Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Education), Chandrashekhar Rokde said, “The idea is to encourage sports which Indians are naturally good at playing and give the students training from a very early stage.” BMC plans to provide training in games like boxing, wrestling, and rifle shooting apart from cricket. The civic body will be tying up with the International Boxing Association (IBA) to provide training in boxing. The IBA proposed the idea to the civic body keeping in mind India’s success at the Olympics recently.

“Children should be definitely encouraged for sports training. Just because civic- school students don’t have major benefits, they should not be left out. Some of India’s major sportsmen come from this pocket too, which shows that there is a great talent pool among them waiting to be tapped,” added Rokde.

“A game like boxing requires expensive training. Students studying in civic schools should not miss out on an opportunity just because of the funds, hence we came up with this initiative to train those students,” said secretary of IBA, Jay Kowli. IBA promises to give free training to the students and also make sure that they get entry into major tournaments. “Usually kids from an upscale group only are able to enter into state tournaments, we will make sure that after adequate training even the BMC students get into such tournaments,” said Kowli.