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SPORTS: BADMINTON
Leap Of Faith
All England champion Pullela Gopichand is Indian badminton's
own zen master, battling adversity and conquering the odds, all with an
amazing grace
By Sharda Ugra
Who's been spreading
all the talk about Pullela Gopichand being a gentleman and a real nice
guy? Nice guys respect the opinions of the wise. They stand in deference,
at attention. When elders speak, they listen. Gopichand clearly doesn't.
If he'd listened when he was just another bright
junior, he could have been in Silicon Valley now, writing code. But no,
he chose a sport which once produced champions for India but, during his
schooldays, only provided entertainment at family picnics for huffing
and puffing uncles and aunties.
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| FULL FLIGHT: An explosive game which
combined athleticism with Indian touch artistry (above) led to Gopi's
triumph in England (below) |
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No future in badminton, he was told. So he won
the national junior championship. An on-court accident took him out of
the game for 10 months and then he was reminded constantly that he would
never come back the same. So, within three years he became senior national
champion.
Fine, fine they said again, but that's it. Didn't
he know Indians in badminton were like Indians in hockey or tennis, out
of touch with the times and outpowered? The Chinese shredded finesse,
scattered it over fancy-schmancy touch artists and ate them for chow.
National champion is all. Be grateful.
Gopichand went to Prakash Padukone, asked if
he could walk in his footsteps and worked to climb up the international
rankings. He took India to the Thomas Cup (men's world team event) finals
for the first time in 12 years last year, beat top 10 players, reached
semi-finals and finals abroad and shot up in the world rankings from No.
38 to No. 6 in just over a year.
He was then told that he should know his place.
Where's the precious silver? He hadn't won any majors, see. He was getting
on in years. Asked about the attention paid to badminton, when he baldly
said that he was better known in south-east Asia than in south-west Delhi,
a yawning media informed him that India was a one-sport country and he'd
better live with it.
Still not listening, Gopichand elbowed aside
the one-sport, one-note wonders, grabbed the biggest piece of silverware
badminton had to offer, kissed it and held it up, his smile a luminous
crescent moon, to his distracted, disbelieving countrymen. Remember this
from 21 years ago? I'm bringing it home again.
The All England championship is to badminton
what Wimbledon is to tennis: the oldest of the majors, the most sought
after, the most venerated trophy. There are other richer and shinier events
but All England is the Holy Grail. When Padukone won it in 1980, he spun
off a mini mania. It kept big stars coming to India, crowds flocking to
matches until the mid-1980s, until the Syed Modi murder and official slackness
stopped the sport in its tracks. Now an old-fashioned and unmistakably
Indian name once again drew British Asians from across the UK to Birmingham,
at £40 a ticket. With a nine-member contingent of shrill teammates,
two coaches who looked ready to explode with worry and delight, and a
good number of Europeans backing him, Gopichand stepped into history,
threw up his arms, threw back his head and breathed the rare air that
only Padukone had before him.
Then, finally, he listened. To the one sound
that most Indian athletes-fringe actors on a stage dominated by a gaudy,
bawdy pantomime called cricket-hardly get to hear: a full-throated chorus
of appreciation and acceptance.
Gopi (that is what he is called by all, barring
gobsmacked British TV experts) already knows that with the All England
title will come as much clamour as he could possibly want. He put two
teammates on the job of calling his family in Chennai and two hours after
his victory they gave up. The lines were jammed. The cause of all the
fuss had to wait as his parents took care of family, friends and the fourth
estate before he spoke to them for the first time from Birmingham. Now
people are ready to eat their words and swallow memories whole: a government
that refused to clear hitting partners for the Indian badminton team to
the Olympics now wants a slice of his time, ready to dump lakhs into his
bank account. The speaker in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly has suddenly
remembered that it is he who is Gopi's "best friend". The badminton
official who told a Delhi doctor he doubted Gopi would ever stand on a
court again will sidle up for a photograph too.
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