When I was completing my secondary education in that great school - N KrishnaswamyMudaliar Higher Secondary School, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India, 'PE periods' as the 'physical education' sessions used to be called, were both a terror (we were made to run and do stuff in the hottest of days!) as well as a relief (how else can you live down a dreary geography lesson?).
The PE teachers (a wiry Loganathan Sir & a bulky Dakshinamoorthy Sir), used to make us do some mandatory stretches and then ask us to choose our games. Cricket was a strict ‘no, no’! So, it used to be Volleyball, Basketball, Football, even Softball and if we are lucky, Ball Badminton!
While all the other games had just one or two implements, Ball-Badminton
required a few racquets (almost always the strings were gone!) and a
sorry-looking spongy ball.
Yet, for the remaining 30-odd minutes, we will play BB: smashes will end up in the ball smashing the smasher’s face (we miss the aim, you see!), drops will invariably be dropping in our own side of the court, points scored were celebrated more vociferously than the EPL goals…
And then the annual Teachers' Day used to happen with some of the teachers showing off their hidden talents in a fantastic manner – high serves, spinning serves, deft
drops, exploding smashes... Oh! that was the first time I saw girls squeal with glee
on some young able-bodied men smashing an yellow ball around. #ToSirWithLove
In those days, shuttlecock (usually pronounced as ‘sattil cork’) used to be
a really rich man’s game. Well, I had seen the shuttle then; but never seen it being
played. Reason? No indoor courts! In the outdoors, the damn thing would fly away!
All of that was due to the impact that Prakash Padukone had (90’s and 2K-Kids: that is Deepika Padukone’s dad!) – newspapers and radio made us to memorize his
exploits against Liem Swie King, Morten Frost etc., and that All England
victory!!
Only after coming to Chennai did I get to see the game being played live;
naturally, the game was still too expensive and anyway in Santhome Higher Secondary,
Cricket took a more centre-stage due to some stalwarts including the great
singer P Unnikrishnan. Cricket’s Loss. Music’s Gain!
Fast Forward to Singapore. Singapore has numerous fantastic indoor
badminton courts that have kept most of the pot-bellied and sometimes fit young/old
people honest in their attempt to keep it going. However, until LKY took
the shuttle world by storm recently, no noteworthy player surfaced.
As for India, after Prakash Padukone, there was a long gap. Academies
came up. Bureaucratic lethargy crept in. Then P Gopichand happened early this
century. Yes, it takes that long for organic growth 😐
And then slowly the stream started getting bigger and bigger. 🌊
Sanias happened; Sindhus leapt up; slowly but surely the rabbits
multiplied. 🐰🐰🐰🐰
And after 73 years of hegemony by Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Denmark, and Japan, today, India has made that Elite-5 into #Elite6. Well, did
a wag say that it is like entering the Badminton Security Council? Perhaps true! 😊
A fantastic shot-in-the-arm for the Badminton fraternity in India – en route the title win, they had to beat Malaysia (5-time winner), Denmark (1) and Indonesia (14)
to achieve Thomas Cup, the ‘Unofficial World Cup’ in Badminton - in style!
Great work by Prannoy, Lakshya, Reddy&Shetty and Kidambi to have managed
this. Plus the entire team. Of course the coach is Gopichand!
Indian sports is reflecting the new India – confident, bold and never-say-die. Be it the over-powering IPL in Cricket, the gungho way that Neeraj Chopra won the unlikeliest javelin Gold in Tokyo Olympics last year and now this set of ‘saattil corkers’!
In a world that is polarising by the minute, this is a uniting silver-lining that we all
deserve to have.
