Students of Patna University (PU) are big on sportsmanship but poor on performance.

The apparent reason behind the trend - only one physical training instructor - for 11 colleges under the university.

Sources said the varsity took part in more than 12 inter-university sports tournaments across the country in the 2014-15 academic session but failed to make the top five.

Students blamed the university for the PU teams' dismal performance in inter-university tournaments.

Ankit Sharma, a student of Patna Science College, said: "The main reason behind PU students not performing well in inter-university tournaments is the lack of infrastructure facilities and poor co-operation from PU."

Ankit said: "PU is the country's seventh oldest university but there is only one physical training instructor, Mitali Mitra, in the entire university at Magadh Mahila College. No college under PU has separate sports coaches for different games and there is no one to guide students, who want to improve their performances."

The student's statement assumes significance, as the colleges under PU have big grounds but hardly any college organises sports tournaments at the college level at regular intervals. The grounds at Patna College and Patna Science College are one of the finest, which the respective colleges can develop to organise sports tournaments but the lack of interest and co-operation from the respective college has affected the situation.

There is a lack of infrastructure facilities too. Umesh Prasad, a student at Patna College, said: "There is a severe shortage of infrastructure facilities such as games kits of cricket, hockey and football."

For indoor games, except chess and carom, there is no badminton racket or table tennis board at the colleges.

However, Suheli, the PU sports co-ordinator, said: "Though the university has failed to make its mark in the sports tournaments in the current academic session, it has started sending teams to different tournaments, which has been stopped a few years back." She further claimed that in the coming year, the university would improve its position as it was contemplating to improve the sports infrastructure.

Some of the tournaments in which PU students took part in the past year were Inter-University East Zone Football Tournament held in Mizoram in October, Inter-University Cricket Tournament held in Jaunpur in December, Chess (Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, Bhubaneswar) in October, Inter-University Athletics Meet held in Bangalore in January this year, Inter-University Badminton Tournament organised by Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in January this year apart from many other tournaments.

In many of these tournaments, the PU students even failed to reach the qualifying round with an exception of the chess tournament. After entering the qualifying round, the PU chess team entered the All India Inter-University Chess Tournament, which was held at Amity University, Noida, in November. But in the tournament, the university failed to make it to the top three.