Ask anyone in Shillong where the city actually keeps its sporting heart, and most people will give you the same one-word answer: Polo. They mean the Polo Ground, the broad green oblong that sits in the Polo neighbourhood east of Police Bazar. It is one of the most recognisable open spaces in any North-East Indian city, and it is also the venue at the centre of Shillong Teer. Every weekday afternoon, hundreds of archers from registered clubs assemble here for the two rounds that produce the day's official number.
The ground itself is older than the Teer game it hosts. Its history reaches back to the British colonial period, runs through the formation of Meghalaya in 1972, and includes a long civic role that has very little to do with archery. This article walks through that history in plain language. It is for readers who follow Shillong Teer regularly and want to understand the place those daily numbers come from, and for visitors and residents who want a clearer picture of one of the city's defining public spaces.
This article is informational and reflects the Editorial Desk's reading of public records, local observation, and standard sources on Shillong's civic history. Visitor details are current at the time of writing but venue use can change; check with local sources if planning a visit.
The Polo Ground occupies a roughly rectangular site in the central Polo neighbourhood, east of Police Bazar and west of the older residential pockets that climb the hill slopes. It is large by the standards of inner-city open spaces, framed on most sides by tall stands of Khasi pine, and tilted gently with the natural slope of the land. Approaching from Police Bazar, you walk past a row of small shops and a quieter stretch of road, and the ground opens up almost suddenly between rows of pine.
The address is not a complicated piece of navigation. Ask any shared taxi or local bus for "Polo Ground" and you will be taken there. Walking from the central business district takes about twenty minutes at a steady pace, and is pleasant in dry weather. The ground is part of the city's daily life in a way that very few comparable urban spaces in India are; people pass through it, walk around it, and use it as a landmark for directions.
The name gives the original use away. The Polo Ground was, in the British colonial period, a polo field used by the military and civilian European population stationed in Shillong. Polo was a standard officers' game across British India, and most cantonment towns of any size kept at least one suitable ground for it. Shillong, which served as the summer capital of Assam province and the headquarters of the Eastern Command at various points, had a substantial European presence and the patronage to maintain a proper field for the game.
The ground was not exclusively used for polo even in those years. It served as a multipurpose open space where parades, athletics meets, civic functions, and informal sports could happen. But polo was the named activity, the one that gave the ground its identity, and the name has stuck through every subsequent change of use.
What is more interesting in retrospect is that the ground sits in the middle of a city that was undergoing a slow but persistent shift through that whole period. The British administration was layered over a much older Khasi society with its own civic traditions, its own community sports including archery, and its own ways of organising public time. The Polo Ground was a British institution, but it was always inside a Khasi context.
The transition out of polo as the principal activity happened gradually through the middle of the twentieth century, alongside the wider changes that followed Indian independence in 1947 and the eventual creation of Meghalaya as a separate state in 1972. The European officers' polo era ended; the ground stayed.
What it became, more than anything else, was a civic open space. Schools used it for sports days and athletics meets. Football clubs used it for matches and practice. The annual official Independence Day and Republic Day events were held there. Occasional public concerts, religious gatherings, and political rallies took advantage of the open space at the city's centre. None of these activities replaced polo as a single dominant use; the ground simply absorbed them all.
That multipurpose pattern has continued. Walk past Polo Ground on a typical week in the city today, and depending on the day you might catch a school cricket practice in the morning, a small athletics group around midday, the daily Teer archery rounds in the afternoon, and a recreational football game in the early evening. The ground sustains all of this because it is large, open, and well-maintained.
Archery in the Khasi Hills is much older than the Polo Ground. The Khasi community has a long tradition of community archery, both as a sport in its own right and as part of broader social and ceremonial life. What happened over the second half of the twentieth century was that the older tradition gradually formalised into licensed clubs, an organising association, and a daily schedule. By the time the modern Teer framework was fully in place, the Polo Ground had emerged as the principal venue for the Shillong rounds.
The Khasi Hills Archery Sports Association (KHASA), the registered body that conducts Shillong Teer today, runs its daily archery sessions at the Polo Ground. Member clubs from across the Khasi Hills field archers each weekday for the two rounds. We have a fuller piece on how KHASA is organised for anyone who wants the institutional detail.
The marriage of venue and sport is in many ways well-suited. The ground is large enough for the archery layout, the surrounding stands of pine provide windbreak and natural backdrop, the slope is gentle enough not to interfere with shooting, and the central location means archers and observers can reach the venue from across the city without difficulty.
The Teer activity at Polo Ground runs Monday through Saturday in the afternoon, in two distinct sessions for the First Round and Second Round respectively. Anyone who has spent time near the ground in the early to mid afternoon will recognise the rhythm: archers begin to arrive in the early afternoon, equipment is checked, the first round opens around 3:30 PM IST with shooting through a fixed window, the count is taken, the result is declared around 3:45 PM, and then the same sequence repeats for the second round about an hour later.
The atmosphere during the rounds is distinctive. It is not a noisy, stadium-style event. The shooting itself is methodical and quiet. The observers, mostly people connected to the participating clubs or to the wider Teer following community, are attentive rather than vocal. The most dramatic moment is usually the counting, where the agreed final number is what determines the declared result. Our piece on how the result is physically declared walks through that counting and sign-off process in more detail.
Outside the Teer hours, the ground continues to live its other lives. Children play, joggers do circuits, civic events use the space when needed, and the slow afternoon turn into evening passes much like it does in any other Indian city with a central open space.
Polo Ground sits at a particular place in Shillong's civic identity that is hard to overstate. It is the city's most accessible large open space; it is one of the oldest named public sites; it has been a venue for so many different activities over so many decades that almost every long-resident Shillong family has some association with it. School memories, civic events, sports days, the occasional concert, the daily Teer rhythm, all of these compress into one place.
The name itself is part of the city's identity. There is a Polo Tower hotel nearby; there are Polo-named shops; the neighbourhood is just called Polo. Directions in central Shillong frequently use the ground as a reference. If you ask where something is and someone says "near Polo", they usually mean within a ten-minute walk of the Polo Ground.
Shillong Teer is one of four licensed Teer counters in Meghalaya, and each has its own venue. Them Marwet is the ground for Khanapara Teer, sitting in Ri-Bhoi district near the Assam-Meghalaya border. Juwai Teer runs at its own ground in Jowai in the Jaintia Hills. Night Teer runs at a separately licensed evening venue. Each venue has its own institutional history and its own relationship with the surrounding community.
What sets Polo Ground apart from the others is not just its central urban location but its multipurpose civic life beyond Teer. Them Marwet is more single-purpose; the Juwai ground similarly runs to a tighter sporting use. Polo Ground is by some distance the most embedded in its city's daily life, partly because of its central location and partly because of the long civic history that long predates archery as the dominant activity.
The Polo Ground is a working public sports venue, not a tourist site. There is no ticketed entry, no organised tour, no visitor centre, and no commentary during the rounds. Visitors who happen to be in Shillong on a weekday afternoon and want to see the Teer archery in person can stand at the public edges of the ground during the shooting window with the standard courtesies, the same way they would observe any other licensed sports practice.
If you are visiting Shillong more broadly and want context on the wider city around the ground, our companion piece Shillong Beyond the Polo Ground walks through the neighbourhoods, markets, and cultural life that the ground sits inside. For practical visit planning, the broad seasonal windows of March-May and September-November are most pleasant.
Several of our long-form pieces build on the venue context this piece sets up. Our piece on KHASA, the conducting body explains the institutional layer; the Khasi archery tradition piece covers the wider cultural background; how the result is declared covers the operational mechanics; and the Meghalaya Amusements Act piece covers the regulatory framework within which the daily rounds operate. Together they fill in most of what a curious reader could want to know about why a particular two-digit number appears on this site every weekday afternoon, and what stands behind it.
The Polo Ground sits in the central Polo neighbourhood of Shillong, a short ride east of the Police Bazar commercial core. It is well-served by shared taxis and local buses, and is a comfortable twenty-minute walk from the central business district in dry weather.
No. The Polo Ground is a working public sports venue used for several activities beyond Teer, including school games, civic events, and occasional public gatherings. The daily Teer archery rounds run in the afternoon during licensed hours, but the ground is also active outside those windows.
The name comes from the venue's original colonial-era use as a polo field. The British military stationed in Shillong played polo here regularly. The name stuck through the venue's many subsequent uses, including its current role as the principal Shillong Teer archery ground.
The Polo Ground operates as a working archery venue rather than as a ticketed visitor attraction. Members of the public who happen to be present during a shooting window can observe from the public edges of the ground with the standard courtesies. There is no formal ticketed entry to watch, no organised tour, and no commentary.
Beyond archery, the Polo Ground has historically been used for football, rugby, athletics, and civic gatherings. It remains a multipurpose civic open space at the heart of Shillong, and on a typical week sees several activities besides the Teer rounds.
Live FR and SR figures for the four Meghalaya Teer counters, published only after the official declaration and cross-checked across independent public sources.
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