I have been playing football for a long time, ever since I could run. There is this small club right across the road – Sunday Club – and everyone in the locality was a member of it. I officially started football practice with them when I was just 6 years old. We used to play in the field behind our house.
Everyone who practiced was older than me and the youngest was 4 years older than me. But they allowed me to practice with them nonetheless. I used to run with them, do stretchings and the exercises, but when they used to start playing they never took me in the team and made me shoot footballs at a goalpost drawn on a wall or dribble it past a series of cones. I used to cry and crib a lot to allow me to play with the senior boys but the coach, Bappa, never allowed me saying that I would get hurt and then my mother would break his leg. Bappa was not too old, rather, he was quite young, just out of college, but he looked very big to me then.
When I had practiced with them for a year, Bappa allowed me to play with them. I rarely got the ball and I was pushed around on the field but everyone took care not to hurt me – not because they feared that my mother would break their legs but because they were quite fond of me, I being the youngest. But I learnt a lot from them – how to pass a ball, how to kick a ball so that it flew up or swerved, how to massage thigh and calf muscles, how to whistle, how to call a referee names from the sidelines, how to wear a shirt with the collar up, how to steal guavas undetected, how to catch dragonflies, and innumerable other things.
I got my first professional break when I was 9. Bappa told us at practice that we were to play against the Nagarjun Athletics Club the next day and got the team ready, deciding who would play at which position and the strategy to be followed. At the end of it all he came up to me, put his hands on my shoulder, looked into my eyes and said, “How would you like to be on the team as a substitute? If you want to play as a substitute, ask permission from your parents and be on the field at 4 o’clock in the evening and we shall leave at 4:30.” I have rarely been so excited in my life. It was like a dream come true. My mother was a bit skeptical but my father allowed me to go.
So at 4 I was on the field. Others had come by then and a few were yet to come. Bappa came with a large packet. In it were our jerseys. Before distributing the jerseys, he called me and said that since I was the youngest in the team and it was my debut, I should get my jersey first. He then presented me with my first ever jersey. It was a #20 jersey, yellow in colour with Sunday Club printed across the chest in black and my name across the back, arching over the number. It was beautiful. Everyone told me that I was looking like a real footballer now.
Our only means of transport was bicycles, so everyone got onto someone’s cycle – I sat proudly on the bar of Bappa’s cycle – and we left for Nagarjun Athletic Club’s field where the match was to be played.
A small crowd had gathered around the field to watch the match. Their coach received us and showed us where we could keep our stuff. We quickly changed into our football gear as Bappa kept rehearsing strategies.
At the whistle from the referee the first eleven from both the teams took to the field and after proper rituals took their respective sides of the field. We made ourselves comfortable on the sidelines, Bappa standing on the sideline with his legs slightly apart and hand at his back, looking like Napoleon over his army.
The whistle blew and the game began.
It was quite a fast paced game and we dominated it from the beginning. Bappa kept shouting instructions from the sidelines, trying to out-shout the rival coach. We scored the first goal in the first half and was leading by a goal when the whistle blew for half-time.
There was water and glucose to be given to each player, who sat down in a circle while Bappa went about criticizing everyone and showing his disappointment at their poor performance.
“One goal! Just one goal! With a team like this! Why are you not passing the ball, Tony? And Rabi, why are you letting that #10 get past you? And what about you Gopal? When are you ever going to shoot the ball? When you are married?”
This went on till the whistle blew again and the second half started. We were able to score two more goals and the match was safely on our side. Five more minutes were left for the game to end when Bappa decided that it was time for me to get some real action. He called for a substitution and I went in. He just told me:
“Do not keep the ball with you for too long and just pass it, keep passing it. You will do well.”
I ran into the field and one of my team mates patted my back and wished me luck. It felt so great. I felt so very important, as if the whole responsibility of the world was on my shoulders. I play on the right side of the field, in the right-out position. I ran without the ball for sometime, always keeping an eye on the ball and the rival players near me, and all of a sudden it happened – the ball was passed to me! I received the ball with my right foot and began running. I dribbled around a rival player and heard applauses and claps around me. Then I saw one of my mates in the open and passed the ball. But at that instant there was a cry from my mates and from the corner of my eye saw a fairly large rival player hurtling towards me.
The ball had left my feet but the fellow had dived for me, boot first. The studs of his boot caught my shin guard with a loud cracking sound and my leg buckled under me. I fell on my side, on top of the player who had hit me. It was painful – not the fall as he had quite some fat to act as a cushion. The pain in my leg was so excruciating that I feared I had broken my leg. I clenched my shin and kept sitting, unable to get up.
Everyone rushed to my side and Bappa quickly had a look at my leg and I could see him visibly relax when he realized that my leg was intact. All my mates had crowded around me, soothing me and saying that I had done well. They were quite impressed that I had not cried after such an impact, but truth to tell, I was too stunned by the impact to cry.
Then there was a commotion all around me. My mates started protesting vociferously against the way I was tackled and the argument quickly heated up leading to blows. Two of the opponent players, including the one who had tackled me, got a red card and were sent out. One of my team mates, who had taken a pot shot at the fellow who had felled me, also got a red card and was sent out. We got a foul.
I was finding it difficult to walk and so I was helped out of the field but no one was substituted for me as only two minutes remained of the game. From the foul that I had earned, we scored another goal and we won the match by four goals to none. I was hailed as the hero for my bravery and my ability to drible past an opponent double my size. Everyone congratulated me. Despite all the pain I was in, my happiness knew no bound. I was the star of my debut match and I had the ball for less than 30 seconds!
That was the start of my football adventures. The next year I officially signed into the Sunday Club football team. And I have never left that club.
No comments:
Post a Comment