Government and various sports associations should involve themselves in rural areas to identify talented sportspersons and should encourage them, opined former Legislative Assembly Speaker Ramesh Kumar.

He was speaking after inaugurating the State-level Tennis ball Cricket Tournament organised by Legend Cricketers Association at Government Pre-University college here.

The talented rural sportspersons are lagging behind due to the lack of expertise, opined Kumar who said that popular sports are turning out to be the possessions of rich people ‘s children, said Ramesh Kumar who presided over the event.

He said that he had urged the State Cricket Board to organise summer camps in rural areas in order to select the talented youth.

Youth of today are showing great deal of interest in cricket. If a summer camp is organised in Srinivaspur to encourage the  cricket aspirants he would bring his friends together to give the required training, said, former test cricketer and captain of Karnataka Ranaji team Raghuram who inaugurated the event.

Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee member L Gopalkrishna, PLD Bank president Dimbaal Narayanaswamy, Taluk Panchayat member N Sriram Reddy, Dimbaal Ashok, N G Bettappa, TMC member Rajendra Prasad, B M Prakash, former member Krishnegowda, Circle Inspector Narayanaswamy, Principal K C Krishna Reddy, Lawyer Shiva Reddy, Congress leader B Venkat Reddy, Chandru, Manjunath, Sudeep, Srinivasulu, Manjunath and others were present on the occasion.